


Those Who Come Closest

by dagas isa (dagas_isa)



Category: Final Fantasy X
Genre: If you only read one work by me, Other, Worldbuilding, oh shit it's a long final fantasy fic get in the car!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-01-10
Updated: 2006-01-10
Packaged: 2017-10-07 13:21:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 30,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/65541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dagas_isa/pseuds/dagas%20isa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How do ordinary people become Fayth? It takes a certain amount of desire, dedication and desperation. These are their stories.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Song of Wings

Rocks don't sing. And yet, from the confines of this small room in this makeshift temple, I can hear the notes as clearly as I used to be able to hear my brother strum on his guitar. That guitar is smashed to bits now, splinters lost among the other shards of wood and metal scattered along the shorelines of Besaid. If one were to be cruel, one would also point out that my brother is like his guitar, smashed to bits and lost among the countless bodies on the shoreline.

Sin has taken our world from us. Any of the epithets, The Punishment, Terror of the Sea, Scourge of Spira, never come close to revealing the truth about Sin. He is our God, and in our fear of him, we'll worship him. I hate it as much anyone else, maybe even a little more, but I'll sacrifice myself to him if it will keep him quiet. The lady Summoner from Zanarkand doesn't say it in so many words, but that's what is. One person from each of the major towns will step forward and become an Aeon who will bless summoners with the power to defeat Sin.

Wounded from the loss of family, friends, and my own future, I stepped forward. I'm just a teenager, I told myself, and I didn't question this impulse I had to fight in the only way I could. I would sacrifice myself become the Besaid Aeon, and for as long as it took, I would fight along with the summoners.

Our temple is an old theater, and while it's still not temple-like enough to suit the Lady Yunalesca, the most important chamber, that of the near-born Fayth is ready. All that needs to be done before she can begin her prayers is the carving of the giant stone into the statue the Fayth will bind itself to.

That's my job, to tame this singing rock into it's final form, and then somehow bind myself into that Fayth. Worse, I'm to do this with nothing but my bare hands and my thoughts.

Yunalesca's words echo in my head as I finally manage to keep one shaky hand on the trembling stone. "Believe," she said, "Have faith, and pour everything you are, and everything you want to be into the stone. And then, you shall shape it, and yourself, into that which will save Spira."

Everything I am isn't very much. Not when I'm just a silly little girl who grew into a silly adolescent and who would have remained silly until the day I died, if not for the last few months of losing everything. The costal village my family lived in was the first to be lost. The ruins of our apartment stand on the beach, but we couldn't live there anymore. With the rest of the newly homeless, we walked along the cliffs to the most central of the villages. Nestled among jungles, bluffs, and lakes, we thought ourselves safe. Without a permanent home, we could at least be grateful that our family remained together and alive.

Sin rampaged Besaid, apparently discontent until the entire place fell to the ground. In the second rampage a month later, my parents had been lost. Thinking to defend the village, both of them rushed out with spears in hand and charge at Sin head on along with dozens of other islanders, all longing for someway to stop Sin and die trying. Such a beast always preferred death, and in the end, that final coup ended with a whimper, or more appropriately, a scream, instead of a bang.

We carried on still, believing that as long as there was still someone to call family at our side we could overcome anything. My brother with his guitar, and I with my weavings labored away at our tasks until our fingers wore down and the blisters betrayed our longing for a futile escape from our grief. Our life was automatic, we never broke down, never ended, but we never moved on. How could we?

We continued in our daze, or at least I did. My brother, something must have dissatisfied him because just over a week ago, he walked to the sea, strumming along as if he were to tame Sin with through a simple serenade. How stupid he was, and yet I understood why he did it. He had never been a fighter, but it's Sin's nature to make people want to fight it. And so, in the only way he knew how, he stepped forward and fought on the shores of Besaid isle with no armor but the clothes on his back and no weapon but his music. It was totally moronic of him, but it was unconventional, and no army that we threw at the beast could tame it, so maybe one solitary young man could.

I wish so much that the unconventional worked that day. It didn't. Sin proved to be as imperious to songs as he was to swords. Somehow, though, I believe my brother knew how futile his quest was before he even set out. Music is in the soul, he told me many times when we were children, Anything with ears can hear the notes, but only the soul hears music. We didn't even know if Sin had ears in that big armored body of his and we already knew that he didn't have a soul. Nothing that relentless in destruction could have something that we would recognize as a soul. Nothing. He gave up, that's all I can think. He didn't sing to Sin to defeat it, he sang to Sin to raise his white flag.

So, I'd lost it all. Working couldn't contain my despair anymore although I tried. I gathered my troubles like thread and began weaving them into a semblance of order and beauty, only to have them break apart at my loom. The threads I used in real life broke with the slightest provocation and the patterns that came so easily to my carefree fingers unraveled as soon as I placed them. I planned on secluding myself, wondering how I would continue motion in a world that stopped spinning.

Only my last outing before I shut myself in for grieving changed my plans. The great summoner Yunalesca came from the north, promising to give us safety from Sin, and safety for our future generations, however long future generations lasted. But she also asked for a volunteer. The Fayth of old Zanarkand had shattered with the city, and so the Aeon's had to be born anew.

I'm very much like my brother: wanting so hard to just surrender, but refusing to do so directly. This opportunity to become a Fayth gave me a way to give up without giving in. I had to take it. Unlike the rest of the volunteers, who would have liked the honor that came with being a Fayth, who would have liked to be the one to protect our new village for generations, I had to have it. No question. No exaggeration. No way I could have died in peace if I did not go this way.

The others raised their hands in the crowd. I separated myself and stepped forward. Whatever someone tried to draw attention, I tried harder until no one could deny my plea, not even someone as exalted as Yunalesca. My knees were sore from begging, and my throat sore from my appeals, but by the following midnight, I had my job, as soon as we could find a chamber and a rock.

I entered the temple at dawn, two weeks from the day that Yunalesca first told us of her solution. The normally lazy, late-rising islanders lined the path that led from my hut to the temple, and Yunalesca, her husband who kept watch over her but stayed in the background, and the man who had been charged with the care of my temple walked up the hill with me.

We're a superstitious lot, and as such, people sought to make offering towards me: finely woven robes, pearl jewelry, relative splendor for a relatively poor island. I wouldn't need them where I was going, I wanted to tell them. But I couldn't, not when refusing their generosity would have happened in the same breath as saying my goodbyes.

So I walked up, splendidly garbed but barefoot to the entrance of the temple, the entire population of our village right behind me. I thought of making a speech, but my mouth was dry and I doubted that anything more profound that I croak would escape my lips. Fortunately, the tap of Yunalesca's fingers on my shoulders indicated that lofty attempts at oration were not part of our schedule. So I just waved goodbye to everyone, the friends and acquaintances whom I now willingly sacrificed myself for. They all waved back, solemn, perhaps even sad as I took my final steps towards the temple.

Before I started crying in front of the entire isle, I ducked inside, where only the Lady Yunalesca and the man who had been chosen for the role of Temple Summoner bowed to me in the new fashion, arms held across our bodies, bottom palm facing up and top palm facing down. Even though I wasn't expected to return it, I did, despite my loathing for this stiff-lined prayer gesture. The temple summoner was an old prominent man, and while I would be something different soon, at the moment, I was nothing but a teenage girl, who never had anything to her name. For this man to bow to me went against what I had learned as a child: respect your elders.

Yunalesca stepped between us and grabbed my arm. "It's time to go, child." Relieved to have all the protocol end, I let her lead me from the front room and closer to the heart of the temple, my new home.

She looked at me sometimes, sidelongly curious about something and yet uncertain to ask. Maybe she wanted to know if I was afraid of this fate that I had chosen for myself now that it was only a matter of minutes when I would cease to live and instead merely be. If she asked, I wouldn't tell the truth, that maybe I was a bit scared of living in a hunk of rock for the rest of my days. I wouldn't live, but I would never die either, no matter how many battles I ended up fighting and how many injuries I obtained. I wondered how much I would hurt, and I wonder if I could take joy in something, maybe defeating Sin.

The next room was a maze of stone and glyphs with spheres that sang to me. The glyphs spoke of the new rituals. They spoke of new traditions and about the Fayth who would give their lives to become Sin and defeat the Aeons. They also spoke of other Fayth, and of dreams that would live on after the war. Yunalesca, lost in concentration, seemed to write these glyphs even as she solved the puzzle that protected my chamber.

Finally, we exited the trial and rode the newly built lift to the room where I would give into my destiny. At the center of the room was a small pit with the singing rock. I thought it would be a fine sculptors stone, formal and worthy of my fate. In actuality, it was just a hunk of cheap sandstone, and the grains eroded away even as a placed my hand on it.

With a wise smile, Yunalesca placed her hand on my shoulders and gave me her instructions:  
"Believe," she said, "Have faith, and pour everything you are, and everything you want to be into the stone. And then, you shall shape it, and yourself, into that which will save Spira."

What I am is a pitiful little girl who couldn't do anything but give up.

What I want to be is a bird. I want to fly over all this strife and trouble and carry the people of our world with me. I've watched seagulls circle our skies and lead our fishermen home. I've heard birds sing so prettily that they lulled crying babies to sleep.

Maybe I'll be weak as a bird, as delicate as a formed wing, but I don't want to be strong. Strength means pain, and anyway, my brother had the right idea. Pain means that Sin wins; all we have on our side is love and beauty and kindness. I want enough power to protect those in my care. When the next one who calls on me tries something silly and stupid, I want to be able to keep them alive.

I poured this desire into the stone that flaked away beneath my touch and gradually it bound my hand to the statue until I couldn't pull back. From the corner of my eyes I could see wings, glorious wings growing from me, even as the rest of me petrified. Gradually, my body stiffened, and the last thing I did before I completely became my statue was close my heavy-growing eyelids.

I sleep now. And when I wake, I shall be known as Valefor.


	2. Song of Paws

Stupid rock. Stupid song that binds itself into my head even as it binds my body to this hunk of stone. Normal rocks don't sing. Normal rocks don't turn a man into a statue, and I wonder why I even bothered with this. Let the old men take up this job, or the useless young women, or a crippled soldier incapable of fighting in a real war. Just don't give this demeaning task to an able-bodied warrior.

Even if he had consented, and volunteered in a voice so loud that even the sound of an island storm was drowned out, they had no right to give this burden to him. I was heartbroken then, and my mind was like that of an animal, only thinking of the present.

Even now, I don't particularly care about defeating Sin. Strife always happens, and regardless of whether it's at the hands of a sea monster, an enemy army, or a lover, so why should we worry about defeating one monster, when others lurk in the shadow, waiting to take the fallen monster's place?

I'm a fighter, and I'll fight anyone, anything, anyhow. On the battlefield, in the blitzsphere, and especially in the bedroom, I'll take on all challengers, and I'll emerge victorious. Like I have all the times before, except once.

That one loss. That one aching defeat haunted me ever since I entered that doomed battle with her, and now it forces me to march toward into this makeshift temple and begin my transformation from a simple man to something so much less and more.

I have to remember that defeat now, and how it was more than just a defeat. No one wins all the time, not even a warrior as wonderful as me. Ever since my return to warm Kilika, I employed all the tricks to force her from my mind. Volunteering for Yunalesca, the talented daughter of Zanarkand's legendary summoner and a gorgeous lady besides had been part of that revenge.

After all, what is my pride compared to sacrificing myself? I gave that bitch my pride, and she wasn't particularly lovely or talented. So, here I would give Yunalesca, a much more worthy lady, the rest of my being for her mission just to prove that there was something more important than her. Except--and this is where the situation stings the most, like the thorny vines that cut through the jungle paths--that the statue is bringing out what I wish would remain hidden and forcing me to confront the truth.

"Remember, when you enter the chamber," Yunalesca's voice rang in my ear clearer than a newly formed sphere, "you won't be able to hold back anything. Everything important that you wished to forget, you'll have to remember one more time."

Even with that dire warning, I refused to turn back. After all the insults I'd been thrown lately, the one I refused to be labeled with was coward. So now, I offer this statue my memories in return for an end to my excruciating defeat.

She wasn't beautiful, that woman from the north. I almost wish she had been. Somehow, this whole ordeal would have been less excruciating had the world been able understand this obsession with her. Had men gathered at her heels like a pack of dogs around their master perhaps my pride could be salvaged and I could walk away knowing that all men had been defeated, not just one.

No, this woman who lodged herself into my mind was plain, not really ugly, just not someone who captured the attention of everyone when she walked into the area, just one ordinary soldier from far south, looking forward to fighting some new battles.

During the great war, the sides were divided between Zanarkand and Bevelle. Macalania was a fairly small city outside of Bevelle. They weren't much of fighters by any means, and so close to one of the centers of war, they needed and hired themselves some protection. How their patronage came all the way to Kilika, who knows? Government bureaucracy or fate, it only matters that a legion of Kilika soldiers, myself included, made that journey to a cold northern city, where she lived.

Of all the women, I have known, with only her can I say that I kissed her before I'd ever seen her face clearly. In the daylight, I would have known better. Had I seen her in the light of a pale and unforgiving sun, I could see her for what she really was. In the glow at the fringes of a ring of fire though, all I knew was that she attracted me and that refusing the pull would have killed me sooner than any blade.

A lady, a beautiful, willing one, had attached herself to my hand and was even then dragging me off into the forest for a lover's duel when I first caught the glows and the shadows of her face. Oddly, all I remember of that lady before her was that I had managed to make some pathetic excuse to my companion before I abandoned her to the vague land of passing somebodies, those people who flowed in and out of my life and never left anything more than a mark that any force of time and any element could erase.

For that moment, I felt as nervous as a boy having his first encounter. We might have traded names, a few lines of conversation in that orange glow, but the first thing I really remember about Macalania was our kiss. Her lips were cool against mine, as if the warmth generated by her body was insufficient against the chill northern air, but they were soft, and melded to mine so easily that I'd imagined that after only a few moments our kiss had melted us into one being.

With my own warmth, I fought the natural coolness of her lips and skin, vowing to myself that I'd warm her up before the kiss ended, and the way she fitted herself to my arms, I swore she knew and agreed to my plan. Our first encounter lasted exactly that long, long enough for my southern heat to subdue that stubborn northern cold that lingered in her. Whether that was seconds, or minutes, or hours, I couldn't tell you, just the measure of temperature from cold to warm and from hot to cool.

I tried to ask her questions, who she was, where she lived, when I could meet her again, but as quickly as she landed into my arms, she slipped out again, leaving lingering traces of her scent and her touch, but nothing that I could follow.

That woman had always been the smart one. How else to explain her avoidance of me, if she didn't already know that we were doomed from the start? In the coming months we'd meet again, under the cover of darkness, a kiss there, a touch there, little points of battle that lighted up the horizon before things grew calm again. But never once did she give me a name or a face to track her by. To be honest, I never gave her mine either. We could love each other, worship each other, do anything we wanted, as long as we knew nothing of the other.

No one person had forbidden anything, like I would have listened had they ever dared. Soldiers were soldiers were men were men, and being men, they liked women, or at least their companionship. Simple enough, right? It was our contrasts that compelled us to keep our battles confined to dark corners: my hot, her cold. I refuse to be considered a timid man, but of all endeavors, I allowed myself to be cautious in just this one.

Fire and Ice oppose each other. Every infant from his cradle knows this. Anyone who had ever studied with a black mage learned this, even if intuition hadn't guided the vast majority of our people to this truth. And now, I learned this lesson anew every time she and I touched. I could melt her, warm her a bit, just enough to produce a lovely steam, conquer little parts of her, but if I went to far, she'd put out my flame.

Stupid metaphors aside, unmasking my opponent would weaken me, as it finally did when identities could be hidden no more, and volunteering the same type of information about myself would weaken me as well, although sometimes, the way that she smiled against my lips or a stray word whispered into my ear hinted that she knew exactly who I was. We would know soon enough, she might have been the only person in Macalania to me, but she was hardly the only person.

Fellow soldiers noticed me slipping away to the other battle fields, nurses and ladies whispered as I went by. My comrades flirted, conversed, and courted these jewels of females; I remained as oblivious to them as I did to what my mother called 'manners' back on Kilika. Rumors flew through the crowds of families, refugees, combatants, priests, everyone, and all of them said the same thing: "That man, the man who was once so strong, has lost himself, to nothing else but a woman." Pride flared the rage in me, but I could hardly protest; my voice was too weak, and my thoughts on where I could meet up with my captor again.

At the same time, a woman always appeared on the fringes of my vision: a nurse, clad in heavy robes and carrying a basket of medicines through the battlefield. Her treatment of patients was always known to be rough, her manner the haughtiest, as if her unremarkable features had to be made up for by a self-superior attitude. To the masses, her gaze filtered through an upturned nose, proud and indifferent, her every motion conveying that she was above them. To me, she showed a particular malice. One injury after another, she'd step over me if I were sitting, refusing to acknowledge my presence. More than once, she'd refused me treatment, preferring that I wait. Those eyes, that never looked at another directly caught mine countless times, freezing me in place and sending a frosty feeling up and down my body.

My instincts screamed to find a way to escape her, like one might escape an erupting volcano or, in this cold land, a glacier. If I remained in her path, she would destroy me, they screamed. True enough, but I would never run. The hatred she showed me, I could show back in full-force. For every icy glare sent my way, I returned one of burning anger. Every injury I obtained, I mended or had an obliging nurse tend to before she ever had the chance to reject me.

Between my lover and I, every behavior began to change as I started the personal war with that bitch. No longer did we dance carefully around the other, looking to blend our contradictory natures; we let them clash in all their discord, breaking down the barriers to the parts of each other that we kept back. At least she broke down my barriers, hers remained solid and frigid, despite my best efforts to penetrate it.

She enjoyed making a fool of me, because that's what I did when I was alone with her. Like an adolescent pleading for his lady's love, I begged for every kiss, for any reaction that she wanted or needed, an acknowledgment that my blows were hitting home. None came.

Surrendering was an option, I suppose. In hindsight, I should have walked away when the changes happened. I should have put my foot down and let her know that this soldier would not fight a desperate losing battle with nothing to gain. In hindsight, I should have taken my pride there and claimed a victory then, telling her that I was a man who would not be stepped on and used. In hindsight, I was and still ama hopeless fool.

Finally, the time came for us to return to Kilika. The war was lost, by all sides save for the one with the sea monster. My war was lost as well. Macalania, so far from the coast, knew little danger; it would survive. My home, on the other hand, had already been attacked two, three times. Home needed us, much more than this snowy hell did.

I received the order at a particularly bad time. Our last skirmish left me with a nasty gash on my arm. Hurt like nothing else, although with time and attention, it would heal. Nurses everywhere were busy. The wounded were piled up, and those with lovers among the ranks were busy having one last good time together. The only person who could treat me was the bitch, and although she did, her eyes were cold and disdainful as she cleaned out my wound. I swear she made it hurt as much as she could; that was just the type of woman she was.

Under all the glaring and the abuse of my poor right arm, I finally cracked. Happy now? I asked her, as she continued her torture. Finally, I return to Kilika and you shall be free of my loathsome presence. Just as I'd be free of hers, I'd wanted to add, but she still had a needle in my skin, and that put me at a disadvantageous position.

The bitch started insulting me then, as if she knew my activities with my mystery lover. Animal, she called me. A rutting animal, a desperate dog, a dumb ass. Her voice shrilled like a shrew's, and I swear I knew a different form of it from somewhere else. The memories that it evoked reminded me of other things, a curve of a jaw in the firelight, a certain shade of pale blue in her eyes, the fullness of a pair of lips under mine.

The shame of that moment, when I found out who my lover was. How much rage I had at that moment and how much I couldn't let it go, despite how much I wanted to. That next chance with her meant too much for me to ruin it at that moment. Next chance with her, I would do what I needed without fear, with all the courage of a warrior going into his last battle and knowing that glory in death is all he can hope for.

No more chances. We leave tomorrow. My next chance was then. My last chance. My best chance. Doing my best to make my expression glassy, I let her wrap my wounds in bandages, as I waited for my moment. It came, and I wanted it more than anything else right then.

Pulling her close to me, no longer afraid of hurting her or being hurt, I kissed her roughly. We never should have been, but we were. Even with all the humiliation I suffered and the pain of defeat, I'm glad to have fought this battle. Determined to walk away a winner, I pressed into her, longing for her to warm to me, and in my desperation, I imagined that her lips softened beneath mine, if only slightly.

I could have imagined that softness beneath my lips, the same softness of our first kiss before we started our terrible intense war. What was beyond my imaginings were the tears that ran down her cheek, touching my skin and tainting our kisses. That broke me. When I thought I could be strong and finally see your weakness, I finally received what I was looking for.

At that moment, I wanted to hate her. That bitch thought she could scorn me even as she took me as a lover, and she did for the long months I spent in those woods. In the end, I could never hate her, because as much hell as she'd put me through, leaving me with nothing but bittersweet memories. Closing my eyes, I clutched my adversary close to me, feeling her soft body beneath mine and smelling her intoxicating scent. Damn it! Why did she have to be so appealing, even as she was the haughty merciless bitch I'd hated.

Our last kiss ended with me a little surer of my defeat. Her eyes, when the opened were filled with the contempt I expected from a frigid like her as one of her tapered fingers pointed to the exit of the tent. And I walked out then, not even pausing for a last look. That frozen glance and that pointed finger was my last mental image of her.

We were doomed from the beginning, I knew that from our last kiss. Still, I want a rematch more than anything. I want to hold something from our times together other than nothing. The stone is squeezing truth from me. No longer can I pretend that I'm not doing this so I can see her somehow again.

I hope she's happy, that bitch, as I transform into what she always saw me as. Nothing more than an animal. Brute strength, with no brain but my instinct. Right now, that sounds good. No more worries about fighting and winning. Just fighting until my muscles are sore and the flames of temper cooled.

I will change. I will fight. My enemies will cower before me, that which is known as Ifrit.


	3. Song of Hooves

Everything moves in a natural order, that cycle of birth, life, and death that everyone takes for granted. I suppose looking back upon the war and the scourge that ended it, the basic cycle remains as unbroken now as it was fifty years ago, when I was a young man enamored with love and life. But, lately, as I walk through the empty halls of my once-dream home, I realize that Sin has perverted this cycle, a cycle that I no longer want to be a part of.

Elders are supposed to die before youths. That is the natural order. I suppose, I ramble on about that, but as a man of almost sixty, I have earned the privilege. This is wisdom not given an outlet, and the remnants of a legacy denied. If I had a son, or a son-in-law still living, I could give him manly advice. If I had my daughter, I could guide her with respectful authority. If I had my grandchildren, I could dandle them upon my knee and tell them my stories. They are gone, destroyed by the folly of this continent, and so I have no one to tell my thoughts to but this stone that is destined to capture me for eternity.

This is my legacy and my last words.

Always, always, have I been meant to run. This destiny was apparent since my birth. "You were born with strong legs," my mother used to tell me in the Luca slums where I grew up. A platitude, I guess, for she told all of her children that, in the hope that they'd escape the poverty she'd born them into. My oldest brother had strong arms and good hands, my sister the voice worthy of singing to the Maester of Bevelle. Other siblings had their own talents, ones my mother said would let us rise. Ahh... but only I did, with those strong legs meant to run wild.

Poor never bothered me. If nothing else in this life, I regret becoming as rich as I have, for when there's no one to pass the world you have built to, wealth is pointless. Of course, that long ago time when I headed out on my own, I never expected that my ventures would leave me empty and rich. I became rich, but that never mattered nearly as much as having space to run. If we were poor in the Outlands, I would have contented myself with being a sharecropper or a hired hand on a chocobo ranch. The poverty found in the city was a much smaller cage than I could bear, and I vowed to escape. Between Luca and the wilderness, there is only a stairway, laced with beautiful marble inlay. As a child, my mother forbade me to climb those stairs, maybe because she knew that one day I would, and when I did, I would never return to the city.

First time climbing those stairs, my legs were strong and young, and the road ahead nothing more than the places where chocobos had trampled the grass into a short tight pack. Farms lined those roads and the smell of agriculture and wide open spaces permeated the air, half-unpleasant, but still better than the smells of an urban slum. Running here, under a wide sky released all those ambitions that poverty had locked up inside me. I would use my energy to run, to build, to prove a destiny which was supposed to be nothing but comforting words and false hope.

Northwards I traveled, on the search for wild chocobos. In those good old days, Chocobos were the key to wealth, at least how I saw it. Chocobo power fueled the ships that sailed from the southern islands, that carted goods from Luca to the city on the Moonflow or from Macalania to Bevelle. Catching those chocobos required a knack, one that I possessed in spades. The path upwards from ranch hand to ranch owner was arduous, but I never faltered, never stopped running for a second, never had any second thoughts. For that much, success became mine, and I brought that success upon my family. Sisters found husbands who'd have never looked twice at them for having bad blood, brothers found job opportunities. Mother and Father moved from the slums to a small house on the outskirts of Luca. Those legs pulled a lot of people from poverty. That defines strength I think.

Oh yes, my younger days were glorious. Not only materially, but physically, emotionally, and spiritually as well. I had a love, the most wonderful love you could imagine, a lady who could dance, who was, the most beautiful in this land, even if any other lovesick lad would claim the same about his lady. Loving her wasn't the amazing part, it was that she loved me too that shook my foundations. Needless to say, I married her, and eventually made a family with her. Somewhere in that time line, I made my fatal mistake, the one that sent me from a contented life to this restless need to die.

I stopped running.

Not in the literal sense. I still moved, still chased my children around the home I built, still wrangled the chocobos along side the laborers who worked with me, still danced with my wife, even when her outer beauty started to fade and her inner beauty started to shine through. But I no longer strived. Why should I? Everything I could possibly want was in my hands: love, success, freedom, power. When people in town talked of me, I was the inspiring success story. If the nagging feeling that I lacked a challenge bothered me, I could remind myself that I was doing what challenged me in the first place, building an empire. So I could stop, for a moment, two, three, and on and on for years, until my legs weakened.

Then the war started, that great one between Bevelle and Zanarkand that shook up our entire continent. No business of a man living in the wilds of Djose, I had thought. No more for me than someone in Besaid, or Kilika, or Luca, or the Moonflow. Oh, but I forgot my children, who had inherited from me that need for motion, those passions and convictions. And when they heard of the war, the great machina of Bevelle against the summoned monsters of Zanarkand, those passions were aroused in my two sons. Conflicting of course, so that one son soon stopped speaking to the other, and eventually both moved away to fight their respective enemies. And my legs were too weak to stop them no matter how loud my voice bellowed when I found out their plans.

If my sons live today, they have never visited their father. Letters used to pour in, reassurances that they were all right, and that no, the one had not yet killed the other. Throughout the war, I had contact as I watched my sons rise in rank. The war worsened steadily with reports of greater casualties and destruction from all sides. Everyday I feared, a new and unpleasant emotion, that my sons were among those sacrificed to this war, but as long as the letters flowed in, I could control the emotions.

The time the war ended, everyone knew. The moment of horrifying stillness descended over Spira, even thousands of miles from the battle sites. Something went wrong in one instant, and a whole city was wiped out, and in its place, the plague that took everything from me was born. The letters from the son who sided with Zanarkand stopped coming all together after that explosion, and I can only fear the worst possible scenario. A few months later and the son who believed in the future of machina wrote me one last letter. He was going into hiding now that Bevelle had forbidden these machina. If he's still alive, I wouldn't be surprised, but he too is as lost to me as death. No one won that war, and no one won the peace either, if I were to put it mildly. However, I prefer to be direct and say that this war and its aftermath is what is tearing this continent apart and disturbing this cycle of life and natural order that I never valued so much until Sin snatched it away from me. One by one, he stole everything that meant anything until all I have left is this house, which is being taken from me in its own way.

Months passed, and my hard work crumbled. My daughter, her husband, and my newborn grandson all moved to the large city on the Moonflow, the one built entirely on bridges. No one knows whether its destruction was the passive collapse of structures in unsecured footings or the active rampages of Sin, but that town fell in one afternoon and all the people with it. A few people on the outskirts made it to dry land in time, but my daughter was always the one to be in the center of things.

When a man starts losing things, precious things, he begins to cling harder to the things he has left: my lovely wife, my home, my business. And yet, he also looks for a way to replace what is lost. I told myself if I stood strong on my legs, I could overcome. And I did, for a while at least. I threw myself into my works with the same vigor of the younger me. More and more I traveled, leaving my wife at home to take care of things in Djose while I wandered for that next catch, the next find that could somehow restore things that were lost. Only to reassure myself that my wife, home, and business were safe did I return occasionally.

Fruitless venture after venture, and I still didn't find that which could fill my emptiness. Meanwhile, Sin worked. The people who have heard my stories as they migrate to the north or south try to comfort me when they hear this part. "At least you weren't there to watch it," they say. "At least you survived." Survival no longer matters, sad to say. Around the time I lost my daughter, I began to lost my will to live. And what happened on my last adventure killed it completely.

My house is the safest structure in the world. Embedded in rocks, it is part of the landscape itself. As near as it is to the coast, sheer cliffs separate it from the sea. Sin cannot reach it. It's isolated, as isolated as a place can be in a world with chocobos and ships that travel both the air and ocean. People do not come there, except as a place to rest before moving on to their destination. In no way is it a target. My house was never attacked, and that early morning when I returned, everything was intact, perfect, silent. Except that every living thing was gone.

I don't know what happened. The yard we keep the chocobos was empty, not so unusual, for the workers often take the chocobos grazing early in the morning. If it were a bit earlier than normal, it was odd perhaps, but not a sign that something was amiss. My house too was empty, a much more usual occurrence. If the relationship between my wife and I became strained in the past months, she still stayed in the house, still waited for me to come home, still slept in our bed. But my wife was gone, and any sign that she might have left me: missing belongings, a goodbye note, were never found. Even now, the room where I stand feeding this rock my life force smells like the flowers in her perfume.

A restless morning blurred into a nervous afternoon, and in an unbearable evening I walked to the sea, just on a horrible whim. When these old legs climbed that cliff overlooking the sea, and I saw the view beyond, that's when my will left me. Sin had proved his superiority, his absolute victory over life in the minutes it took me to realize what had happened. The wind blew a foul stench, enough that I pulled up my bandana over my nose to filter it somehow. A few scatters of yellow feathers, a charm necklace my wife wore. In the outermost fringes of the land below, carcasses were scattered about.

I realized then, what my mistake was. The legs that built my empire destroyed it. They used to know when to run and when to stand, but no more. Now emotions controlled everything, and following those longings cost me too much. So I no longer stood after my wife's death. I no longer ran. I just sat around in this safe house, waiting until just a couple of weeks ago for something to come to me while I wasted away.

Lady Yunalesca was that something. My house for a long time had been the resting point for migrants and travelers between Luca and the cities north of the Moonflow, and while visitors were reasonably common, Lady Yunalesca was the most prominent one to ever grace my doorstep. The evening I spent talking to her and her guardians, this idea formed in my head. The idea of how to start running again, and how to prove a victory over Sin.

My house would become a temple, and I would become its Aeon.

Yunalesca needed the Aeon. Before the city built on the Moonflow collapsed, she had designated a temple to be built there. The person chosen to become the Fayth had died in the disaster and the site had sank below the waters; therefore, Yunalesca was backtracking to Luca to adjust her plans and build a temple there. I begged her to consider making this place into that needed temple. What use was this grand house, if I had no heirs to pass it down to? I argued. What memory will others have of an old man if he does not have living family and cannot be immortalized through stories? Make this your temple, I begged. Make me the Fayth. And Yunalesca, out of necessity or out of pity, agreed.

Already the most basic adjustments to my house are done. Local rock from that dreaded cliff graces the center of what used to be the bedroom I shared with my wife. Even now I'm fusing with it, carving into the shape that I'm about to become. Workers still pound away downstairs, turning this from a residence to a holy place. Some holy place that has witnessed to many deaths and so much chaos. Their noises and the outside world fade away as I escape into this form and think of what my legacy shall be.

Oh yes, I long to run again. Long, long ago, there used to be animals on this planet faster than any chocobo with hooves that pounded over the land Legends said that the hoof beats pounding over the plains created the thunder in the skies. I long to be that animal, to run and make thunder. To protect those who summon me the way that I was unable to protect those I cared for in life. My legacy will carry on, as I become the bearer of storms, the keeper of motion, and the one who will judge Sin.

In my human form, I used to be called Ramuh, but I will forever be known as Ixion.


	4. Song of Feet

I am human.

I sing that declaration with all that I am. I am human. I shout it in my biggest voice even though there is no one and nothing but rock to hear me. I am human.

This stone threatens me, and not for the first time I wonder why I chose this path. I have the talent, I could be a summoner and command these Fayth. So why am I becoming a Fayth instead? Aeons are bestial things, if my impression of Yunalesca's summonings is correct. I am not bestial. I am human. If I repeat it enough, maybe I won't become an animal when this rock absorbs my soul. These thoughts of mine, carefully trained to stay on course, burst out and scatter, so I have to wander and pull them in one by one, so I could place them in this statue, and if I examine them enough, maybe I will understand.

My most recent memories I gather first, the immediate events that placed me on this island lake temple, with nothing but a stone to give my last words to. I am sure that everyone in Spira knows of the Lady Yunalesca's pilgrimage and her setting of a tradition that will last to the end of time. Certainly everyone in this small town of Macalania knew, and when she gathered us in the main plaza asking for volunteers, hands waves and thrashed above the crowd begging for their owners to be chosen. None of them were mine, but when Yunalesca said that she would have to think about her decision, her gaze was on me and me alone.

Macalania always had a temple, no new one would be erected to honor the summoner's journey, but rather the old one would be converted from the worship of the Ice Goddess to the worship of Yu Yevon. As an acolyte of the Goddess, I resided in the temple, saying my last goodbyes to tradition for the inevitable sacrifice. Yunalesca sought me out there and cornered this poor woman. For some odd reason she seemed to have this idea that of all the people in Macalania, only I could serve as the Fayth of this temple.

I disagreed at first, even if I see it as inevitable now. Honor and glory were never what I wanted in life; my time as an acolyte was spent as a nurse for the wretched, the ill, and the foreign soldiers who defended Macalania from Bevelle during the war. That's as far from glory as a priestess-in-training can get. Nor am I the one for self-sacrifice. Those I've helped and tended, I did for duty and the eventual promise of a reward, not because I honestly cared. Caring is for the soft-hearted, the warm-hearted, and I was neither of those. Not particularly. Not at all.

We are all born for something, I believe. Born with certain characteristics that make us who we are, just like one might be born with blue or brown or swirly green eyes. Some people are born to love, to be loved, for love. I'm not one of those people. I was born on the fringes of the community, grew up the outcast, turned to the temples so that I could live how I wanted: alone and to myself. I was born for solitude and for duty. Duty is the reason I considered this position after Yunalesca showed me why of all the people in Macalania, all the lovers, the fighters, and the one's who would do this willingly, it was the most reluctant who had to become the Fayth.

All Aeons are people, even if their form gives the impression of mythical beasts. Through summoning those Aeons, Yunalesca showed me that. Valefor was gentle, graceful, calm and serene when Yunalesca summoned her. Ixion was wild yes, but when he had run that restlessness off, he trotted up proudly and imperially stood by Yunalesca's side. Ifrit... Ifrit was angry, powerful, and when I looked into his eyes, I didn't just see the impression of the man he used to be or the beast he became, but recognition. He knew me; I knew him, and for a time we stared at each other. In the border of a scene of woman and beast staring into the other's eyes, Yunalesca watched, patient and still, knowing that her victory required no more work than keeping this Aeon out and letting me know him.

The Aeon itself snapped and raved at me at first, struggling against the invisible ties that kept him from harming me. Claws scratched the temple floors where his limbs flailed, raising one of the most teeth-grinding noises I have ever had the displeasure of hearing. Still and silent, I watched, so transfixed on that rage that I never considered safety. Of course, as ready to attack as he might be, he was still unable to act without the word of a summoner, and Yunalesca waited so stoically and gave no command but that he let me see him.

Yes, I knew the man inside this animal, and somehow I knew I created this form of his. How many times did I call him an animal? How many times have I scorned him to prove to some imaginary audience that I never cared? How many times did I stand unresponsive to his touch to prove that I never needed him? And yet...how many times did I come back and make myself available for him?

I remember those months on the battle field, he the soldier, I the nurse. I remember those feelings, repressed for so long that expressing them seemed so unnatural, so painful to feel them come out, and yet feeling more complete for doing so. And yet...when we parted, I still hurt because I could no longer accept the solitude I still believe so strongly is my only birthright. How deeply I regret those times, but not for the reasons people imagine when they find out that the coldest woman in Macalania regrets a love affair. I never regretted my involvement with that soldier; I regret the doubts I had.

He and I together forever would have been impossible. We had different values, our ways of living different as a regimented northern town is different from a carefree southern island. A war can connect the places for a few sweet months, years if the world is unlucky. A storm, natural or man made, can force almost any two people together, but all storms must end. What is vital during the storm becomes unbearable in the clear light of the sun and moon. Those months on the Bevelle-Macalania front were the storm we caught each other in, but the sun always threatened to appear over the horizon even before Sin ended everything. And in the end, that wild southerner and I could never suit. He belonged in the warmth just as much as I belonged to the snow. Foreseeing that parting, I tried resign myself, tried to lock myself away, to never imagine what my future might be like, could be like, would be like, except that it could never change from how I'd gone on before I met him.

Those doubts were reasonable, always reasonable. They were also wrong. I could have asked him to stay up here, could have told him who I was, could have summoned up the courage to fight my weakness, if only I hand known what I had learned from looking at this pitiful creature he became. Thoughts snapped into place and I approached the raging Ifrit, much less afraid than I had the right to be. I created him months ago. Always, I mocked him, compared him to the animals and fiends that roamed the forests, just as he used to accuse me of being frozen. Can it be a coincidence that he chose a form so close to what I accused him of being? Logic says no.

Drawing closer to him, I watched as his frenzy increased momentarily and then died out completely when I placed a hand against him and touched my head to his chest, and let my tears flow into his fur as everything became as clear as a winter night. He did this, not because of the anger I drove him towards, not because of my accusations, my insults, or my last triumphant tirade, but because he wanted to see me, one last time. Witnessing that dedication now, why could have I not put my faith into him back when we could have both been happy?

The beast the fought and scrambled to attack stood still for me, and even appeared to return my embrace somehow as Yunalesca dismissed him and turned to the crying me. "Do you understand why it is you? Why you must be the Macalania Fayth?"

Honestly, when the tears dried, I didn't quite understand. Now that I knew what had happened to the one I could give up solitude for, I could see the possibility of being with him again. If only I could be a summoner. Doubtless, I had the aptitude, the connection with the temples, and the training to become one. Yunalesca herself is searching not only for Fayth, but for those who will learn the summoners arts, either to defeat Sin or to train future generations of summoners. Why sacrifice myself to a stone, when I could do important works as a human?

I asked that of Yunalesca, and I learned the core of the summoner's art.

A Fayth is nothing but their song, and their song nothing but the story that they will tell every summoner to ever step into their chamber. Every song is the same tune, with the same lyrics, but the voice always differs, and the singer will always convey a different meaning with their words. That is why the ones designated to become Fayths cannot do it for some imagined glory. History will forbid the writing of our names and our stories because our memories belong only in the heart of a summoner, not in the pages of a book. When summoners pray for a way to defeat Sin, they volunteer to carry our stories. "Weapons cannot save the world from Sin," Yunalesca said, "only memories can."

Ifrit and I have shared memories: Two sides to the same tragic story, the ones who committed two fatal errors. His story, probably told with the same gusto with which he did everything else was powerful, I was certain. Why else would Yunalesca choose him? Alone though, it was a tale of a lover scorned. Together with me though, it could become perhaps something more, a tale of two opposites, loving and doubting each other, sacrificing what they valued and not realizing what they had stolen in return. And then, for each other, ultimately giving up life and death just to have one last chance at a connection. At least, that's what I hope they glean from this.

This is why I have to become the Fayth of Macalania, so I can complete that story I wrote during my time as a woman: the one about the two lovers that will never really live for my doubts. I am human, though. No forced circumstances will take that away from me. This temple used to be dedicated to the local patron goddess, the goddess of ice. It seems a shame that the Macalanians will have to give her up to help fight an enemy that will most likely not attack this inland village. I shall take her name and her form.

I feed my thoughts to the cold marble beneath my hand, and I feel myself starting to freeze. The chill air blows through even my heavy robes, but it is only for a moment that I feel discomfort, for sensations grow distant as my being merges into the stone to carve out my new shape. Externally, my expression will remain solemn forever, but internally, I smile, satisfied that I shall forever be human.

Oh, but I'm not done thinking yet. I have one last thought, one more request of every summoner who will journey. I can no longer convey anything but through your will, so you will have to deliver this message for me:

Tell him, tell Ifrit, that Shiva loves him.


	5. Song of Wheels

Have you ever been caught between two things? Between the need to obey one person and the need to defy another, even if they want the same thing? Maybe somewhere there's a way to do both. I don't like Yunalesca; she's the one who made me and my family suffer. I love my father, as icky as it is to say, so I want to honor him too. I think I've found a way to do both, so I talk to the rock and become a Fayth like Yunalesca expects and maybe start things that she'll never see coming.

The other Fayth told stories to the stones, Yunalesca said. Well, they were also grown-ups too, and they had those stories to tell. I don't really... there was this one time when me and this other kid sneaked into the blitzball stadium and watched the teams play without a ticket. Well, we tried to; our parents caught us before we could get past the front gate. Or the time when I saw the Zanarkands' Aeons coming over Bevelle ready to destroy us, when an airship squadron annihilated the summons right before everyone's eyes. The explosions looked like fireworks, sad fireworks though. Mom and dad and little brother were okay and so was I, but I liked seeing those terrifying Aeons kind of, before I realized what they could do.

They reminded me of Evrae, Bevelle's guardian. Sometimes you could see her flying through the air at night, with her tail whipping at the wind. My father said that she was sent here by St. Bevelle after he died, and so she watched over us. When the Zanarkands would come close to destroying our homes, she'd fly between them and the Aeons while our Airships fired at the line of summoners. I liked watching that, although I felt so sorry for the Aeons and maybe even the summoners a little bit. We learned in school that they were evil, but my dad used to say they were just a little misguided. My father's friends called him a diplomat; his enemies called him wishy-washy. War never suited my father because he believed in what he called 'gray areas'. Like even though they sent Aeons here to destroy our homes, sometimes our machina would destroy theirs.

I'd try to imagine a Zanarkand kid watching with that wonderful frightful feeling as our Airships loomed over their horizons and their Aeons coming out of nowhere to defend their home. I'd try to imagine a home where Aeons did the work machina did, although when I told my father about that he just laughed at me and explained that the Zanarkands had machina to do their everyday work, but they believed that depending too much on machina would somehow destroy the bond they had with their Aeons. So they started rejecting our machina. They forbade any airships to fly over their cities, even though there was some good material that we needed up north, and they even sent Aeons to warn them off. According to him, things got worse from there, and it became a battle of ideals: Machina versus Aeons.

But Zanarkands use machina too. And we have Evrae, which I guess is kind of like an Aeon who guards all of Bevelle. There isn't really one or the other. Whenever I say something like that at school, the teachers send me to have a talk with the headmaster, who calls my parents. Father is on the council that rules Bevelle and our family is pretty powerful anyway. Anyway, the school punishes me when I say things like that, and my parents will lecture me in front of the headmaster for thinking such dangerous and subversive thoughts. When we got home though, Father would treat me to some ice cream and say that I've done good work by trying to think about things rather than accepting what was fed to me.

I always liked the Aeons too, what little I saw of them during the war. They were horrible and terrifying, but I always wondered what it would be like to see those creatures on my side. Famous Aeons abounded: Leviathan, a great snake who brought with him tidal waves that washed out the lower districts; Titan, who made the earth rumble with his footsteps; Alexander, who shone like a mystical castle in the sky when his summoner called him in the middle of the night. We learned their forms and how to defend against them, but I'd not pay attention and draw my hands over the illustrations. They weren't real, but their mere presence had a weight I couldn't resist. They were similar to Sin that way.

Our first warning about Sin came from a messenger from the Zanarkand front knocking on my father's door and gasping. They'd just been ready to strike the decisive victory, he reported, but then this great monster showed up and trampled the city flat in just a few minutes. With Zanarkand in rubble, it turned towards our troops, as if regarding them with interest. That messenger and a handful of other soldiers were the only ones from that regiment to make it back to Bevelle alive, if only to report that Sin was last seen heading in our general direction.

Murmurs followed the rumor of Sin's appearance. My classmates used to tell stories about the big sea monster and how our Airships would take him down easily even before the got to our side of Gagazet. But I knew he'd come here, and he did. The first time I saw Sin lumbering upon the coastline of Bevelle, it was sunset and the reddish light cast a spooky glow on his scales. He stretched further than we could see, and for a moment, I thought that he must have ate Zanarkand because a beast that size surely fed on cities. Part of him looked like an Aeon, but none of our airships could outlast him long enough to drive him away from our shore. We don't know how many people died from Sin's first attack, but large parts of Bevelle were nothing but piles of metallic shards afterwards. Bevelle already had a huge temple in dedication to our favorite saint, and the priests there took in all the homeless and the orphans they could. My family was okay and my house didn't get destroyed, so I was lucky, at least right then.

After his first rampage on Bevelle, Sin didn't retreat like everyone thought he would. Instead the monster lurked at the edge of our sight, regarding us with what I thought was a wary eye. The adults assured me that Sin was only a monster who couldn't think, but I knew better. He was waiting for something to happen before he moved on or attacked again, and I think that something was the last High Summoner of Zanarkand, Lady Yunalesca.

We learned something about the important Zanarkand figures in our class at school. Yu Yevon was the High Summoner until the end of the war, which means that he was the one who led the summoner armies and controlled the most powerful Aeon. But he'd disappeared around the time that Sin showed up to eat Zanarkand, so Lady Yunalesca represented the few survivors of Zanarkand, although only she and her husband Lord Zaon met with my father and the council so we never found out how many survivors there were.

Things changed in Bevelle too after the end of the war and Sin's first attack, and I guess it's because of those changes that I'm the one in this chamber instead of anyone else. You see, my father, who used to be mocked by the rest of the council for being weak and wishy-washy was now the best person to try to make the peace with the Zanarkands. So he got elected the new leader of Bevelle. Maybe his enemies knew what was going next, or they didn't want to have responsibility anymore, now that they knew they never actually won the war. Or maybe they were really confused and wanted my father to help them.

So my father was the High Statesman of Bevelle and the person responsible for meeting with Yunalesca. The lights in our house would stay on all the time, even when the rest of Bevelle slept. Sometimes I'd wake up late at night and I'd hear those murmurs, the negotiations between us and the Zanarkands. They knew how to tame Sin for short amounts of time, and they were willing to share their secrets under certain conditions.

My luck ran out during those negotiations. The final night, the one where Yunalesca and my father finally reached a compromise. My father and her would make a new church in worship of her father Yu Yevon, who was Sin now and who would always be Sin until we atoned for our sins. People everywhere would construct temples in honor of Yu Yevon and to house the Fayth for the new Aeons the future summoners would need to train themselves in order to defeat Sin. Use of machina would be limited, if not completely discontinued. Yunalesca would undergo the first pilgrimage to become the first High Summoner and bring about the Calm, a short time without Sin. She would oversee the constructions of the temples and choose those to become the Fayth. All kind of basic and boring, except for her last condition.

"Bevelle will be safe from Sin, but only if you sacrifice someone important to become the Fayth."

I heard my father offer to be the Bevelle Fayth, only he couldn't be because he had to lead the new church when Yunalesca was gone. I guess what she meant was the Bevelle people had a habit of making the poorer people do the work while the richer people got to play. So we would probably make a poor person give up their life to become the Fayth. I don't think Yunalesca liked that idea and that's why she gave that condition.

During this conversation, I stood outside the mostly closed door, peering into the room and watching the discussion between my father and Yunalesca. Neither of them made a point until then to notice me, although I knew my father could at tell I was there. Nothing ever got past him. But when the condition about someone important becoming the Fayth, Yunalesca turned towards where I was watching. I swore I never saw my father get madder than he did when Yunalesca suggested that his oldest son become the Fayth, not even when I colored on the walls as a little boy. Not even when his enemies called him weak.

For all that my father was a easygoing man, when his temper broke I never wanted to be anywhere near him. Yunalesca though, continued sipping the strong tea my father served for political stuff, and waited for his temper to wane. She then explained the sacrifices that every other city in Spira had to make for the sake of Sin and her own sacrifices if she were going to undergo a pilgrimage for the people who destroyed her home. Someone important to the new Grand Maester, me, had to be sacrificed. Of course she gave us the choice to think about whether we'd accept the offer, while she journeyed to the other cities, but looking at my father, I thought he had already made his choice.

He accepted the time to think though, almost impassive, although when Yunalesca left shortly afterwards, he called me to him and gave me the biggest hug he could manage. Seriously, for a second or so I thought I was going to die from suffocation before he let go, but I guess I didn't mind it that much. He promised that he'd think of some way I could be saved, if I didn't want to become the Fayth of Bevelle before Yunalesca came back. Or he could not strike out that condition and let Bevelle get struck down, but my father was never the type to sacrifice Bevelle's safety for anything.

Months and months passed, and my father never thought of anything. He'd accepted that I would have to become the Fayth and that he'd rather just spend the time with me and my mother and my three-year-old brother than trying to find someway to thwart the person who could help his people. Besides, there were whole districts of this city to rebuild, and I guess he'd rather think about that. I would have too, but I always tried to think of some way to get around Yunalesca without upsetting my father. And eventually, I had a plan too.

When guards posted on the border to Macalania woods informed my father that Yunalesca would reach Bevelle in two days, I put my secret plan in action. I remember packing up a few sandwiches and some cookies into a bag along with my favorite book and maybe a couple of toys, and then sneaking out of the house while my mother was busy taking care of little brother, and my father was at the temple, watching the construction of the new Fayth's chamber.

What followed were the worst three days of my life. Even with my best jacket, the one with the old symbol of Bevelle embroidered on the back, the non-stop rain during that time soaked through so that I was shivering cold and wet. My sandwiches ran out after only the first day, so my belly remained kind of empty until I found out that some people who were nice enough to buy a poor kid a hot dog as long as he wasn't too scruffy. But after just one day, I was much too ragged. I slogged through puddles and took off my shoes when they got too heavy, so by the time I made it through a particularly long series of puddles, I had dropped them somewhere and couldn't find them again. I tried not to, but it seemed like whenever I had a few moments of rest, I spent them thinking of my parents being worried than I did playing or reading like I thought I would. I hid down in the lower districts, as far away from my house, so I don't remember hearing people call out for me. I did see pictures of me, all clean and happy, and apparently no one made the connection between the son of the future Grand Maester and the dirty little homeless kid, curled up for warmth in a building corner.

Even all of that was better than going home and being Yunalesca's Aeon. Ever since she made my father sad, I stopped liking the Zanarkands. They were all dead, and I didn't want to be part of their scheme to punish Bevelle, which is what this was. Yu Yevon was her father, right? I know that if my father did something that upset me or mom so much, he would try to change. Grandfather did that sometimes when he and my father had disagreements. So why did we have to go through so much to stop something for such a small amount of time?

My charade ended yesterday, four days after I ran away and the evening after Yunalesca's arrival. The search parties finally came down into the poorer districts, and one of them recognized the Wheel of Bevelle on the back of my jacket. At that time, I was feeling kind of bad, both sick and guilty about running away, and the people were nice enough to feed me and let me dry me off a little bit. I thought they would take me home, but instead they took me to the temple, where both my father, dressed up in new priest robes and now the official Grand Maester of Yevon and the Lady Yunalesca stared down at me disapprovingly. Well, no, my father hugged me when he first saw me, and then stared down at me disapprovingly. Neither of them yelled at me, not right then. My father took me into one of the side rooms of the temple and then proceeded to yell at me. First, about worrying them so much, and second, for shirking my responsibility to Bevelle. Yunalesca was giving every citizen a gift by promising Bevelle's safety, and he would rather that I live forever as an Aeon than die on the street where he'd never see me again. How long could I have lasted? Not as long as an Aeon surely, and maybe not long enough to grow up.

I don't cry much. Not even when I was caught in the rain with no food and my shoes lost and trying to hide from people searching for me, but I was crying then, like I was now, having found a story to tell this rock. My father hugged me a long time and told me that I had to become the Aeon because I was smart enough to think of some way to defeat Sin for real while I was a Fayth. I agreed then, holding on to the hope that I could do things as a Fayth that I couldn't as a boy. We walked out hand and hand to tell Yunalesca that I agreed to be the Fayth of Bevelle.

The three of us walked through the new Cloister of Trials and to the room before where my chamber would be. The antechamber, Yunalesca called it. And then she took me aside and told me lots of things. I still didn't like her, but I didn't want to disappoint my father or my city, so I listened to her. And I guess, what I learned there is sleeping in my head to take form.

A lot of the stuff she told me was normal how-to: How to talk to the stones to become the fayth, how I had to say the shape that you want to be. And then she told me about Sin, and the city inside of him. A dream Zanarkand, she called it, as the surviving Zanarkands became Fayth at the top of Gagazet and dreamed up people to live in that imaginary city. Sin would last forever, she said, unless people from the dream Zanarkand sacrificed themselves to destroy Sin. Otherwise, things would go around in a circle.

So here I am now, in this chamber, still barefoot in dirty, torn clothes. Since I made up my mind, I didn't want to go back home. I'm not happy doing this, but I know that somewhere inside me I have a plan. Fayths dream up the imaginary Zanarkands, and I'm a fayth. So one day, maybe I'll get the power to dream up a Zanarkand who will come back to this world and see that it is worth saving. I can change things. I guess that's a story because the rock seems to like it enough to pull me in.

I want to be big and powerful, the symbol of Bevelle. I don't want my future summoners to have to make hard choices like my father did. I want to be a dragon like Evrae, with the Wheel of Bevelle attached to my back like I was still wearing my favorite jacket. I want my voice to be more powerful than Sin roaring. I want to be like one of those magnificent, powerful Aeons that the Zanarkands used to release on our town back in the old days, the ones that still fascinate me so much.

I want to be...Bahamut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bahamut was the most difficult Fayth to write for so far, and this is actually the third version of his story that I started, and the only one I actually completed. At first I conceived him as a homeless kid whom the Bevelle maesters were sacrificing so that no one who really mattered would have to give up their life to become the Fayth, which is pretty much the opposite of this version. I'd had that image of him ever since I had the idea to write about the Fayth, but when it came down to put things down on paper, it seemed too...simplistic to do things that way. Bevelle was still the evil city of FFX and FFX-2, Yunalesca would have been a temporary mother figure to Bahamut Fayth, and she would offer him the chance to dream up someone that he wanted to be, which didn't give me a chance to question her motives as anything less than pure.
> 
> So I made him the son of the most powerful man in Bevelle, and suddenly Yunalesca could very well be doing this for revenge. Those Bevelle politicians, at least one anyway, did have redeeming virtues. And I think I could explain the kid being slightly more observant about political things and less jaded than a homeless kid would realistically be. I think his character here also accounts for him being more active in Tidus's journey through Spira than any of the other Fayth.


	6. Song of Fins

So this is how it ends. Everything I have ever tried to build or protect ends in this one moment, back where everything started. Only instead of watching my Yuna pray to the Fayth, I am the one becoming the Fayth. So this is how it goes. I will die and be reborn in the same city I spent my life in. Only this time, that city will be decayed stone and its only inhabitants the pyreflies of the unsent souls of our dead comrades. As I sing my song to this hollow statue, I search my life for every little bit of me I can, so that I can finish and start my role in this tragedy.

The Final Aeon is different from any of the others. Across the world, the Aeons will dream forever and become part of the consciousness of every follower of Yevon. Every summoner to make this pilgrimage shall know them. The Final Aeon though, is the most personal, the one in which the shape of the individual summoner's sacrifice is told. Other Aeons will differ by the summoner's strength and the abilities they learn, but all will be built from the same template. Valefor will always be the girl from Besaid, Ixion the old man in Djose. The Final Aeon is the bonds the summoner makes while journeying, and the key source of his or her strength. No two will ever be the same.

So what inside me will be the shape of my Yuna's sacrifice?

There are many shapes to describe, first of business, then friendship, then eventually love. All those bonds mean so much more than their words imply, and not one of them means more than another. For even as her husband, I have guarded her zealously, and even as her guardian, she is still my best friend, and even as my friend, I still love her more than I can imagine loving any woman. On this empty statue I draw these shapes now.

Every summoner and every guardian starts their journey with vows taken in front of the high summoner himself, and I repeat now them in this isolated chamber, only one room away from where I took those vows twelve years before. I see myself dressed in the finest armor my merchant family could afford, kneeling before a younger Yuna, dressed in her formal robes, and her father, the high summoner Yu Yevon. The memory becomes so vivid that I can smell the clouds of heavy incense from the temple, and I'm back in the body of my younger self, hearing my voice saying the vows again:

_My strength is your courage_

My life is your shield

Through the darkest times, I will light your way

I shall support you as you support the world.

I shall protect you and you protect others.

I, Tan Zaon, vow to guard the Lady Summoner Yu Yunalesca with all I have until the end.

Within me, Yunalesca echoes the ritual response:

_My courage is your loyalty._

My life is the thread held in your hands.

Through the darkest times, I will lead the way.

If I support the world, it shall be because you support me.

If I protect others, it shall be because I am protected.

I, Yu Yunalesca, summoner of Zanarkand, entrust Tan Zaon with the duty of guardian.

I stood up, offering her my arm, as I escorted her out of the temple and through the Zanarkand Dome. As the last people in our class to take the vows, she and I joined the other newly pronounced summoners and guardians to greet the citizens. Peace would still live in our cities for another three years before our clash with Bevelle changed the world, and summoners and their guardians were regarded as little more than pretty ornaments from the past. The vows themselves, as nice as they were to say, meant very little, as the average guardian was little more than a servant or social escort to their summoner.

She and I weren't the most ambitious pair. The guardian is the laziest job any Zanarkand can have for decent pay, which was why I chose to go for guardian training rather than work at my father's store or join the real army in charge of keeping peace around the borders. Yuna herself became a summoner because of the expectations from her father and the community. Many times, Yunalesca has told me that I became her guardian because she liked how I looked, not because of any sort of competence I might have had. To be honest, I had liked the way she looked too, so I really can't judge her too harshly.

So we had the relationship of a summoner and guardian, friendly how protocol expected us to be friendly but never closer, and together we formed a laughingstock of a partnership. Neither of us cared, nor had we been tested. We passed most of our time figuring out ways to shirk our duties and exploring the back alleys of Zanarkand or watching the Blitzball games at the Dome. Responsibility had about as much priority in our lives as our dining hall had flavor in their meals.

That was soon to change.

Nothing good has ever happened when my Yuna wakes me up. Over the years, every time she has woken me in the middle of the night, it has been only because something bad has happened, and so the pattern started when the war broke out with Bevelle. She rushed to my chamber the night of the first airship raid, still in her sleeping gown and her hair still hanging down below her waist. Before she explained anything, she and I were out on the streets confronting the first waves of Machina to invade our city. I don't remember much of the first battle except for the lights, sounds, and the incredible heat of the airships unloading a payload too close to us for my comfort. I do remember the aftermath, when my tense muscles relaxed into something resembling overcooked noodles and my Yuna began crying, not only for our close calls but for the death of her Aeon and the death of those he had attacked. My guardian training left me there, as I wondered how to go about comforting a distressed summoner. I still don't think I know how for sure, only that I had tried anything more than standing around helplessly, and have still done so.

Somehow we endured, while so many others perished. Not because of our skill, as the best of our class fell at the front lines after their first, second, third battle. All of them knew the theory and application better than either Yuna or I, and yet they were first to fall. Those watching us called our survival luck. Yu Yevon preferred to call it something more.

The man who became Sin always had a knowing quality to him. The most uncomfortable moments during my training happened when the high-summoner strolled by to watch us recruits. Whenever I looked up during those times, Yu Yevon's eyes would be there to greet mine and just for a few seconds he would stare before smiling faintly at me and turning away. Sometimes, I don't believe it was Yuna's decision alone for me to become her guardian. The night of the choosing between summoner and guardian, he had walked up to me and murmured, "Something more, my boy. Something more. Don't forget that." It sounded like advice, but I never comprehended, and when I turned to ask him what he meant, he was already talking to the next initiate.

During those first few months of the war, I began to remember those words and dwell on them. Summoners are our most powerful warriors, but they do not fight with weapons. The Aeons have always been the memories of our people, willingly given to fuel the next generation of summoners, and the bond between summoners and guardians are often much closer than what even our vows predict. A summoner must be emotionally strong; they must understand what it means to be connected to people, and to express the memories of those who cannot talk. They must have convictions. To keep their body alive is vital, but to keep them useful, a guardian must also preserve the summoner's soul.

During peacetime, the relationship between summoner and guardian can be shallow, and skill or political savvy alone can suffice for one's advancement in the ranks. Some of the most prestigious summoners died within the few days of the war's beginning because their superior skills covered a lack of real bond between summoner and guardian. All those times we skipped training to explore, Yuna and I had actually been forming that vital bond between summoner and guardian. When I placed my body in front of the Bevelle gunfire, I did so for my friend, not for my summoner. When I held a Yuna traumatized from watching her Aeon die for the fourth time in a week, I did so to stop the tears of someone I grew progressively closer to, not to keep her mind healthy for the next fight.

To tell the truth, we hated the war, hated the fighting with all that we were, even as we became skillful soldiers together. Many times we had to barricade ourselves from the Bevelle soldiers and their machina creations, and I remember how much we talked at first, how we would say the most trivial things we could only to break the silence, and then how gradually just being with her and holding her became enough for me, so that the silence became as much of a relief as I could have when the smell of my city burning lingered in the air.

I recall our first kiss, stolen in a rare quiet moment between sieges and the first time either of us admitted that our bond perhaps went deeper than the typical summoner-guardian relationship, as we narrowly escaped death yet again. After a couple of years fighting, the moments when death seemed close blurred together, but I know that each one was freshly horrible at the time as I thought that surely this one would end our good luck. That sense of urgency, that knowledge that our next battle could be our last made it so that as soon as we admitted to each other our love, we approached Yu Yevon asking for marriage.

The sly man must have planned this, how willingly he accepted the news of his daughter and her guardian binding together, and the quickness with which he produced the necessary trappings of a wedding: rings, flowers, fancy robes only seemed to confirm this. The vows we spoke as bride and groom echoed those we spoke five years earlier at our initiation, the only difference was that in this relationship we were equals instead of master and servant. And oh, I remember the feeling of being equal with my Yuna for the first time, how good it felt to have all the barriers of rank removed between us.

I wish I could say that our marriage was happy, and I suppose that the marriage itself was. End the war suddenly, or place Yuna and I as simple farmers down in Kilika, and our life together was as perfect as could be expected from any couple. But the moments of joy always preceded some sorrow as the war slowly and surely turned in Bevelle's favor. Machina are disposable in ways that even Aeons are not. Every time an Aeon dies, a little part of the Fayth leaves for the Farplane, and so our Aeons slowly faded away. Bevellians rebuild destroyed machines from scraps of metal and lightning magic, destroyed Fayth are not so simple to rebuild. People sacrificed to become Fayth. They sacrifice life, and they sacrifice a peaceful death to become the weapons of their summoners. Few people do that for a lost cause, and Yu Yevon was not the type of person to persist in lost causes unless he can find a way to victory, any sort of victory. So the amount of availiable Aeons slowly dwindled.

Eight years after the start of the war and a year ago, just as the final Fayth were dissolving, Yu Yevon showed to the Zanarkands and the Bevellians his belief in victory. For the second time, Yuna woke me in the middle of the night, this time to deliver the news that her father had gone mad finally and that we needed to leave Zanarkand with any survivors we could. The Bevellians had invaded our city and according to official reports captured the High-Summoner, but Yuna's fervent tugging on my armor while the messenger girl delivered that news told me that was a lie, but any questions about Yu Yevon's whereabouts brought only the insistent order that we get the survivors out of Zanarkand. All together, we gathered maybe ten-thousand people, some rich, some humble, the youngest a newborn girl and the oldest, a woman of nearly sixty, and we made the journey up Mt. Gagazet.

I think it was during that journey, the one Yuna would later call Pilgrimage of the Fayth where I took my first steps back from myself and realized how much Yuna and I had changed. Not only the obvious changes in skill and dedication, but also in our relationship. Yuna still led, giving the direction to our destination, a cliff just over the peak of the mountain, at a place where one could supposedly see the whole world. Yuna still led, but I walked in front of her now, refusing to expose her to any danger that lay ahead. My life was protecting her, keeping her in my arms at any cost. As Yuna grew more skilled, she grew more dependent on her guardian, even shedding most of her clothing and entrusting me with the duty of keeping her warm. She grew to be less of a person and more of a summoner, and showing her human spirit only to me, a gift I was supposed to protect while she executed Yu Yevon's plan.

We traveled, all ten-thousand of us, maybe twenty miles from the limits of Zanarkand to the peak of Gagazet, and not once did the Bevellians stop us. The rest of our summoners kept them busy on the ground, so that a summoner, her guardian, and the civilians they led seemed more like hopeless refugees than a threat. I wonder what would have happened if some insightful Bevellian had understood our leader's plan.

We made it to the overlook just as the first winter snows would have fallen on Zanarkand, although to look at the mountain, I would have sworn that we were already in the middle of the season. "We rest here, against that wall." Yuna told the refugees, "and dream of home." When I came to join them, Yunalesca yanked me away from that wall quickly, almost angry that I had joined them. "Watch and wait," was her only explanation.

The sun set, night fell, and every one of the pilgrims fell asleep on that wall, presumably dreaming of Zanarkand. The process that followed was gradual from moment to moment I could never see the changes, but as one hour passed and then two and on until dawn, I could not mistake what was happening. People slowly melted into stone as the rock began to take on a carved form. Right before my eyes, they became Fayth, although my imagination failed to find a reason why even the most exalted of summoners would need an Aeon consisting of the memories of so many people.

Sin, or the entity that would later be called Sin, rose opposite the sun on the western horizon, slowing lumbering towards the city of Zanarkand. Neither Yuna nor I were present for Sin's original rampage, but Yuna told me later that she had known all along what was happening. I don't believe I sensed anything as much as I just knew inside me that Sin would destroy our empty city, and then turn himself on the Bevellians.

At the destruction of Zanarkand, my Yuna told me what her father had sworn her to keep silent about. Her father, having seen no real victory for the Zanarkands and refusing to surrender, chose to find another way to live on. He would create a summoned city of Zanarkand, one that he himself would summon eternally, and those pilgrims we led to the wall on Mt. Gagazet would be his Fayth. Around that great city, he would build an armor, the monster later known as Sin, who would serve another purpose by punishing those responsible for Zanarkand's destruction. Zanarkand would live on in an eternally peaceful dream, while the victors had the uncertain reality. Furthermore, he entrusted my Yuna with the secret of defeating him temporarily.

"The Summoners of Zanarkand will be reborn," he had said. "Fayth shall arise over the continent to support their summoners, and all of them will travel to the future ruins of this city, so that any who wish to defeat me must know and understand my story and the crimes of Bevelle. Every summoner wishing to defeat me will sacrifice themselves and one they love, as we have sacrificed for our cities in order to get an Aeon powerful enough to crack this armor, but who shall also become the seed for its rebirth. And you, my beloved daughter Yunalesca shall show them the way. You and your husband shall talk with the Bevellians and make arrangements for the first pilgrimage. You will be the first High-Summoner of the new age."

The first part of his promise fulfilled, Yuna slowly grew more human as we journeyed to Bevelle, growing less dependent on me to keep her connected to this world. By the time we actually talked to the high-councilor, my Yuna was mostly her own self again, although much more solemn and determined than she had been in Zanarkand. During those negotiations, I stood to the side, watching her talk with this diplomat, the only one who seemed to understand the need for a lasting peace. I heard her plan for ending the suffering of this continent. I heard the words 'Final Aeon' mentioned and I knew then that the bond that let us endure for so many years would now be our ending.

The Final Aeon is a special tradition of Zanarkand, one that has only been used in times of dire peril, and one that only the high-summoner has access to. The summoner sacrifices the one thing or person they care about most in the world, turning it into an Aeon powerful enough to destroy anything at the cost of both the summoner and the sacrifice. Yu Yevon sacrificed the real city of Zanarkand and its people to create Sin and the dream of an eternally peaceful Zanarkand. Yuna would do the same. For the price of her husband and her life, she would give these people the secret of Sin's life.

Even with the end of our journey hanging like the sword from the ceiling, those months on the road from Bevelle to Besaid and slowly back again were the best of my life. Yuna and I were together, during peacetime, where the only dangers we had to confront were wild fiends tamer than any machina. Slowly we regained our old vigor, and we enjoyed our travels. Neither of us had left Zanarkand before its destruction, and had we no war, we might have made a trip only as far as Bevelle. The world is so much bigger that the path between Zanarkand and Bevelle, and together my Yuna and I traversed it.

Often we paused in our journey where Sin had rampaged to help the citizens rebuild their villages. Both of us remained calm while talking to those caught in Sin's wrath, but when we left, often the first day or so of our journey would be spent grieving. Together we mourned the collapse of the old world and together we celebrated as we built the foundations of the next one. We listened to the stories in the villages and watched new Aeons being born. With each one that Yuna collected, I could see her smile more and that in turn made me smile.

That happiness lasted until we faced the Ronso encampment at the base of Mt. Gagazet. They were generous hosts, always kind to their guests, but the drastic change to their mountain disturbed them, enough that they urged us to move on quickly. To hear their concerns was to have to acknowledge the Fayth Scar that created our dream city and Sin. Yunalesca purposefully created the Fayth Scar where every subsequent pilgrim would have to pass to get to Zanarkand, but neither of us thought about having to pass that wall ourselves, or having to visit the ruins of our hometown. Each step up the mountain trail grew more somber than the last, and each morning, breaking camp grew more difficult, until finally we reached that wall of Fayth.

All of it was stone, no flesh to be found, but we still recognized the features. I knew none of them personally, but I recognized someone I knew in all of them. That old man was grandfather, that young girl my cousin's daughter. A youth reminded me of myself during guardian training. Yuna too, recognized those faces and held on to me, weeping underneath her mask of serenity. We cried all the way to Zanarkand, our hands involuntarily picking up the rubble as our minds tried to figure where it would have fit when our city was whole.

Never knowing whether we should hurry through the city trying to ignore the memories left behind, or whether we should pause to reflect on those same memories, our trip through Zanarkand was a series of jerks and stops. We'd quickly move through the outer streets only to stop at the place where we first kissed, the ruins of an abandoned shop. Inside the dome, everything changed. We had to hurry through here, because even the dead Bevelle soldiers who had somehow risen as zombies seemed driven to keep us from our city, but every so often, the swarms of pyreflies would grow so thick that we could see nothing beyond the memories of our dead. Even hurrying to the temple, confrontation with the Bevelle zombies and berserk machina or transfixion by the pyrefly swarms would slow us down. Despite these things, Yuna and I are here now, where everything began.

That is the shape of my sacrifice. I can call it a circle because it ends exactly where it began, with vows taken for my summoner. I can call it a pillar because that is what I have been for my Yuna, the physical and emotional support that she leans on, In the end, though it is really so much more, the shape of my sacrifice is the bond between husband and wife as well as the one between summoner and guardian. More than that, the shape is the way those relationships support each other, for I would not love my Yuna so deeply if I never guarded her, nor would I be so strong a guardian if I did not love my Yuna so. Those bonds feed on each other, growing stronger because the other exists.

It is what has let us endured, and finally it is what will break us.

There is no "I." There is only we, and we are the Final Aeon.


	7. Song of Shoes

Everyone has his price, lower for some than for others. If paid enough, anyone is capable of anything; even the most steadfast man will sacrifice his principles. At the same time, everyone has one particular thing they will pay any price for, and before they expire, everyone will pay their life's debts. I've come to that last point, I realize as I sit alone in a hole in this musty cavern. My time to reconcile debts has arrived, and no one cares if I am not ready to pay. My love of material goods and the promise of fortune brought me to this hole I dug, and only the statue I owe my demise to and the stray dog who followed me from Remiem are here to witness this defining moment of my eternity.

Only what I had dismissed as worthless can save me now. Training as a Blade of Honor, a prestigious military force of Bevelle, instilled in me secret techniques to control mind and body, and one of those could save me now if I retained the strength to use it. Silence can shield me, because if I could silence my thoughts and emotions, I could escape from the grasp of this rock. The leeching of those intangible things binds me to this statue as I fight to remember.

Breathe, I tell myself, recalling at least that from the teachings. Just breathe and clear your head. My thoughts rode away on every exhaled puff of air, but each inhalation brought new thoughts, much like waves retreating and advancing on the shore. Pieces of my memories pile up, topple over each other and fall, but none of them ever leave. My head remains crowded, and the newly-forming statue pulls me closer, extracting those bits of information from me. Until I have signed a full confession, I cannot stop myself from thinking. So I succumb, thinking of who I am and what I did.

They are the same though. My deeds are my identity; and I am nothing if not a man of action, of grand works. When I was honorable, I helped only the most in need; when I was a mercenary, I served only those with the most money; and now as a thief I stole only the most valuable objects. Small deeds are for small men, and I refused to be small. Honor, glory, fame, wealth: I sought desperately to become someone influential but never quite attained my only dream.

When I was honorable, glory went to the rich; when I was rich, glory went to the daring; and now that I am daring, I find that I dared too much for any sort of glory. No one remembers the individuals who become Fayth. So, I suppose that these thoughts are the only possible way that others will know of me.

My problem had always lay in my desire for the light of renown and the lingering envy of people who seemed to effortlessly attain the bright reflections I dreamed about. If personal weakness had caused me to remain unrecognized, I could accept that. My failings, however, I had never seen. In sports, I was athletic, in battle training, a hard-worker, in school, a bright student. Ability, aptitude, spirit, none of those indicators of success found any lack of themselves in me. No, my failure to attain glory happened because of much more complex aspects of myself and the society that I sought to please so much.

I spent the first part of my life an honorable man, and no one else ever lived the Code of Honor as precisely as I did. Help those who need help, the commandments said, and I did, the most wretched of the bunch. Ask for no payment and take inner peace as your reward, my mentors told me, and I did, feeding off personal satisfaction and cold rice. Discipline yourself to remain a sharp blade, certain proverbs whispered, and I did, always remaining stone-faced and resistant to worldly temptations. I lived by principles ingrained in me, although I still hoped. People always hope, even when they are trained to expect nothing, and I fear that I was the same. I might have expected little material reward, but I wanted renown, for people to invite me into their homes. But welcomes are not nearly so warm when one dresses in shabby clothes and wears layers of old dirt because beauty is a luxury. Money bought passage into the hearts and good-standing of others I concluded, and so I changed.

I renounced my position as a Blade. Poverty and honor seemed to have lost luster for more than just myself, for it seemed that the faction broke in the middle of yet another upheaval on Bevelle. I took the mask and became a mercenary, doing for the rich what I used to do for the helpless. Always competent and capable, I earned my generous pay. Presentable and with the occasional present, I achieved what I thought was glory as a Blade, but remained unsatiated. People bought my services, but they never spoke of me. They never gave me a name beyond my title. Still, I quested for riches and I held tightly to the belief that if I became rich enough people would eventually see me as a person and not as a commodity. Of course, fame still stayed out of my reach, as I became concerned by only the richest of clients. So concerned, in fact, that I turned down the surest chance to attain my goal for the temporary gain of money.

Until a couple of years ago, the people of Spira doubted Yevon's truth. 400 years, people, even priests, whispered, 400 years since Yunalesca had defeated Sin the first time and shown the world the way of the summoners. Every year, people tried to imitate her achievement, tracing her path from Bevelle to Besaid and then to the mysterious ruins of Zanarkand even further north than my home village. Every year, every summoner either returned or did not return, but none of them completed the pilgrimage. With Yevon in doubt, fewer attempted the pilgrimage, until only one wizened old man had the registered with the temples as an active pilgrim.

I will prove Yevon right or wrong, that old man Gandof said, if I do not defeat Sin, then you may say that it is impossible. Until then, we must hold belief in Yevon's teachings. To this day, I do not know if that statement was bragging or a simple factual statement that he was the only one who believed enough in the teachings to become the high-summoner in this age. I do know that I had finished escorting an older lady to the temple, and so overheard his statements and had the opportunity to become one of his guardians. He had three already: Yenna, Ziel, and Torak, all presumably close friends or family of his, but one more expert could never hurt, he told me.

I asked him what my payment would be, and for the first time since I became rich, I saw someone's eyes visibly darken towards me. Adventure, he told me, the discovering of a story much larger than myself, the small potential to be among the saviors of Spira. In other words, nothing I considered valuable. Of course, I chose to continue on my normal, lucrative job. Of course, not even three months later, word reached Luca that the old man Gandof and his three guardians had defeated Sin and brought the Calm to all of Spira, the first such period of peace in over four centuries. Yevon was right, everyone marveled, and statues of Gandof graced every temple from Bevelle to the backwater Besaid. Scribes wrote the story of Gandof and his guardians in the history texts. To think I could have been with them made me clench my fist with controlled rage.

The anger at the sly old man aside, the regret channeled my thinking into a new course. Money bought a certain amount of respect, true, but it was an anonymous respect that anyone could pay for, and no longer did it suit me. My name was more important, and I longed for people to whisper it in fear and awe. So I ended my life as a body guard and mercenary and began planning something so great, so terrible that if anyone could outshine High Summoner Gandof a mere two years after his Calm came and went, he would be me. I planned a theft.

I did not target any old bauble or trinket as another thief might have, but instead the most precious thing in Spira I could conceive getting close to. To honor High Summoner Gandof, his hometown of Remiem, a mere day's walk from mine, was granted license to build a new temple to Yevon, with a close friend of Lord Gandof to become its Fayth, and thus carry some of the essence of the High Summoner to future generations. Already, the temple stood mostly complete, and the rock for the Fayth stood unsealed and uncovered in the chamber of the Fayth, relatively accessible for something so precious because most Spirans cannot conceive stealing such a sacred artifact. Most dismiss such an act as impossible, even.

To their credit, stealing any of the original Fayth was indeed impossible. Upon the pain of death, all those who were neither a summoner nor a guardian were allowed to even enter the Chamber of Trials, not to mention anything passing the trials themselves. Perhaps if I had succeeded with the Fayth rock, my ambition would have driven me to steal the real statues. And maybe, in retrospect, getting the real Fayth and getting away would have been easier than with this raw stone.

Getting my hands on the rock had been easy. Blade training had taught me well the arts of stealth, but for this operation, openness stood to my best advantage. Not just for getting in and getting out, but for recognition later, as the man who stole a Fayth. People always suspect the sneaky and respect the bold, and not a little bitterness drove me to make fools of them all. So when a man built for the heavy construction work walked into the temple with a large basket on his back few took any notice. Maybe a few noticed when that same man hauled a heavy load out of the temple, but none assumed he was more than the garbage man removing rubble.

Removing the fayth from town was easy as well; a simple cart and chocobos rented for the occasion worked well and remained congruous to the image of the humble garbage collector. The empty rock radiated no energy to give me away despite already being prepared for the Fayth ceremony, and the priests had already taken their weekly visit, so no one took immediate notice. I slipped through the gates of Remiem before the first alarm sounded.

Unfortunately, once out of town, I could not afford leave cart tracks across the wide expanse of abandoned I had to traverse. Sheltered Remiem was the only living town between Bevelle and Gagazet, and her borders did not leave scattered farms and residences outside of her protective crevasse. So when I entered the newly christened Calm Lands, Sin's second graveyard, I did so on foot with the Fayth strapped securely on my back. Earlier scouting had revealed an unguarded gorge and a cave where I could wait safely. Fiends and enemies I might encounter were no concern as long as no one knew the whole story until I revealed it and stole back my glory in a bold confession that scholars of history would remember for centuries, even beyond the time when we atone for our sins.

If any or all of the complications had been material, I would have succeeded, caught or free, everyone would have known my name. I planned for every mortal possibility, the odd guard, search parties, any handicaps extra weight caused, but I did not expect to fight hallucinations or that the solitary trudge from Remiem to that northwestern cave would prompt me to engage in the rare introspection.

The external landscape remained unremarkable, and only by following a sheer cliff wall did I find the path to the gorge, but internally, I met myself for the first time. I saw that craving for acknowledgment that I had carried as a child into adulthood, and I saw that craving as the mistake that postponed my glory. For the worthy must be valued in their own right. They do great deeds because they hold great beliefs and passions. Those renowned for wealth use their wealth not merely to show off, but for what they believe in. Those gain fame through honor personify their virtue and wear it like a crown that straightens their back. The bold are that way because they view the world as a place where safety gains nothing and loses everything. They achieve what I desire because they shine as themselves, while my actions were plain farce.

My true motive for this heist revealed itself as I crossed the bridge and looked for that path. Could it be a coincidence that I stole an object that would commemorate Gandof's successful pilgrimage? That I crossed a land he scarred to hide my burden? I did this as revenge towards that gnarled man, even if the historical victory would always belong to him. No, I did this to avenge the only other chance I had to let others know my name.

I reached that cave barely aware of my surroundings and even the dog who trailed behind me to share my food. Silly things, so quickly affectionate from campfire scraps, that what remained of my lucid self wondered why winning notice from humans remained so difficult. Having something follow me was novel though, so I kept him around, and as my fate became clear to me, I accepted that one stray dog would be my only follower and the only one to know what I had done.

Still, I believed the rock only drove me to madness. If I buried it in the cave, and never thought of the statue again, I could salvage my survival from this situation, I thought. My training as a servant of Yevon taught me the holy symbols of protection and sealing. Surely they were just as potent scratched into dirt as they were painted on expensive paper. Self-preservation drove me to frenzied digging. My hands bled with the effort of shoveling the hard ground, but eventually a hole deep enough to fit the rock formed.

Even now, thinking of the whole situation, I have no clue how I fell into this hole. Reason says clumsiness, but logic failed me too many times recently to be trusted. My instinct says the stone drew me in here, that somehow, it believes I am the one to carve it into a finished form. Very well, stone, I realize that this is my final debt to pay; may Yevon let me achieve my living dreams as an Aeon.

I am the thief of my own Fayth. I am Yojimbo.


	8. Song of Chains

Sin broke Spira, and now it lurks in the water to prevent the world's repair. For one thousand years, it remains ultimately unvanquished. The wills of summoners can subdue it for a few months, or a couple of years at the most. Any person or place falls when Sin approaches, and he approaches everywhere. The sea harbors him, but the air also holds him when he rampages. Not even inland towns can claim to defend against him all of the time. So when the tangible crumbles effortlessly, ideals become our salvation.

Atonement walks alongside hope. If the entire world atones for that long ago war, we hope that something inside Sin will recognize our effort and forgive us. The teachings of Yevon offer methods for atonement. Most continue the destructive use of machina, humans care for the Aeons and the tradition of the summoner, Ronso protect the mountain that seals Zanarkand from the reaches of living people, and Guado maintain the horizon where living hearts reunite with dead souls. When all respect the teachings of Yevon, and live life according to his plan, Sin will recognize. Sin will understand our sorrow. Sin will forgive.

Yunalesca told us otherwise, before she bound my son and me together as summoner and Aeon. Of everything on Spira, only Sin receives the privilege of rebirth through the body of the very Aeon who slays it. So the cycle continues. For years, my faith slipped and listening to the calm words of the world's most revered summoner pried the last shred of it from my hands.

I still accept atonement; I still accept hope. Spira will always die, but if I let her tie me to my son as his Aeon, I can find those principles on an elusive level. I excelled as a disciple of Yevon, but my ideals hampered me as a wife and most especially a mother. My regrets regarding my husband and son are tied so closely to the parts of my life I could never rescind.

So many strange events twisted my life, so much that the young acolyte who started my journey would never recognize me. Ideals used to control me, as I perched by the Macalania temple doors, waiting, waiting for something or someone to come along and give me a purpose. I believed deeply in Yevon's scriptures, that his words must echo throughout Spira. I longed to open the ears of those still waiting to understand the message. So when the injured Jyscal Guado made his unceremonious entrance through the very doors where I stood vigil.

No one ever learned the full story of his injury; Guado have a tendency to never tell a full story, I later learned. His wounds still needed care, and as an important man, it fell to the daughter of the temple summoner to tend to him. Newly made lord of Guadosalam, Jyscal Guado owned the titles of lord and visionary. As I wrapped his limbs in bandages and spoke the incantations to heal wounds, I also listened to his stories.

For the almost one-thousand years that Sin rampaged the world, and before then even, the Guado guarded the Farplane. Jyscal's ancestors taught him that Guadosalam lay at the center of the world, safe from the outside because they bridge the living world with the source of all everything. Stories of Sin kept his race in their hometown, protecting tradition through isolation. Humans radiate from the world's center, and therefore Sin plucks their lives in batches and takes them back to the world's core, where all ultimately belong.

Human missionaries always visited Guadosalam throughout Jyscal's childhood to be run out of town after a few days by his father, but the snippets the young Guado heard fascinated him. Like any good heir, Jyscal had pride in his race and its mission, but still he longed to know the world beyond and the teachings his family denied him in youth. Before he was sworn in, he had declared to his people, he would indulge this desire to travel across Spira and come back all the wiser, so that he may lead his race to a new era.

As a human, I found him odd but attractive. Strangely-proportioned limbs still betrayed a noble grace. On a human, his thirty or more years would have killed any attraction, but on that Guado, the age lent him a dignity that resonated in me. Beyond any physical aesthetics, the kindred spirit I finally found in Jyscal sealed my feelings for him. I heard his ideals in his words; his desire to take risks for something bigger resonated in me. When he chose at the end of his treatment to study theology at Macalania in addition to ruling Guadosalam, I realized that if I were to marry anyone, I would marry this Guado.

Weeks later, Jyscal Guado finally set out for Guadosalam on Chocobo with me watching his retreating back. Those following weeks and months blurred into a routine following that farewell. Every other week, Jyscal came for a couple of days and studied theology under the eye of my father, gradually learning enough about Yevon's scripture and practices to impress any temple summoner. His moments outside the classroom, he spent with me, discussing his plans for the future. The unification of Guado and human ideals, he called it.

I believed. My interaction with him proved that human and Guado knowledge complimented each other. Keeping them separate when they could accomplish so much more together seemed shameful. Also, the Guado gradually understood the teachings of Yevon, while Jyscal came to understand something more. The Ronso guarded Mount Gagazet as a sacred duty to Yevon, so perhaps the Guado held the same duty regarding the Farplane. If that was true, he mused, the atonement Yevon talks about must also apply to Guado. I did not know what power the Guado lord invoked, but one unusually snowy day in Macalania, he brought the entire Guado tribe to worship.

They looked in awe at the temple buildings, listened in rapture as I explained how the fayth for the Aeon Shiva lay just beyond the doors to the trial. I expected this reaction from the Guado, but imagine my surprise when they all bowed before me and Jyscal explained the other reason he came. His ideal for human and Guado unity required that he take a human wife, and who better, he told me than the woman who conspired with him to bring everyone together under Yevon's teachings. Even though that was ten years ago, I can still taste the cloying sweetness of that moment's joy. As I planned for this since we first talked, I immediately accepted. Surely, we could realize our lovely wish for Spira.

A lavish wedding filled our icy temple with guests from everywhere. Even the Grand Maester Mika attended to watch as the Guado responsible for preaching Yevon's truth to his own kind united with the daughter of a faithful temple summoner. Following the celebration, we journeyed to our new home to start living our dream.

My first childless year in Guadosalam foreshadowed the difficulties I would later face with Seymour, but always I remained hopeful. Jyscal had stretched so much to learn of human ways, that I felt obligated to do the same for the Guado, even studying the old Guado speak. Everywhere I turned though, everyone reminded me that I belonged on the periphery, accepted only because Lord Jyscal wed me. If I understood them and they understood me, I could make peace with them. This constant optimism and denial carried me until the day I discovered that I carried Jyscal's child.

Since the day he was born, Seymour embodied the ideal of Human-Guado unity. The features of both races had somehow combined to make a handsome child, the human side giving proportion and the Guado side panache that humans lacked. The favorable blending extended to internal features as well. The human ingenuity and drive combined with Guado wisdom and pride made him a student even brighter than his father. Always, I felt for Seymour a love that managed to be both maternal and intellectual. My hopes renewed, and Jyscal's as well, as I have never seen him as happy has he was when he saw his son for the first time.

Our ideals culminated in the creation of our lovely son, as perfect as his mother's sight could make him, but I gradually became aware of abstract principle's greatest enemy: reality. I understood the Guado's hostility towards me; I threatened their traditional way of life, and I robbed from one of their daughter's a chance at marrying into a prestigious family, but their rejection of Seymour became unbearable. Human and Guado alike united under derision of my son. Children teased him; adult shunned him. Jyscal and I understood the urgency for our races to unite, but apparently no one else did.

As for Jyscal, his gift for theology and his accomplishment for bringing the worship of Yevon to the Guado drew the attention of Guado Maesters to him. The year Seymour celebrated his fifth birthday, Bevelle swore Jyscal in as a Maester of Yevon. He presented a pleasant face to the world as he realized his great accomplishments, but inside our manor in Guadosalam, his facade crumbled. Church politics sapped his faith, and although his love for Seymour and I endured, the pressures of disapproval weighed heavily on him.

So when he offered to sequester Seymour and I away at Baaj temple, far, far to the southeast. I accepted, for the sake of our family. Seymour needed escape from the constant ridicule, Jyscal needed serenity, and I needed time to think. In hindsight, I realize that reality made our happy ending impossible. I realize that Jyscal shared the blame for the misery our union seemed to cause, but then I just wanted the suffering to end. I wanted to think of something. So Seymour, Jyscal, and I boarded that boat and embarked on a journey to what seemed like another world.

A permanent fog blanketed Baaj Temple, a place so far isolated from the rest of Spira that in a previous incarnation the Al Bhed had used it as shelter. By the time they fled, most of the temple had sunk beneath the water's surface, but Jyscal said he knew of an above ground entrance.

Our farewell, free of the guards that usually trailed him, brought back a few of the happier times, as Jyscal gave us the blueprints he found in the Bevelle Temple libraries. We walked into those ruins together, and I almost opened my mouth to ask that he stay. He would have, I know, because he loved his family, but responsibility chained him to the cruel outside.

Two years we spent in that damp temple. Water constantly dripped while I taught Seymour, while we ate, while we slept, but even through all that, Seymour was always a good child and an excellent scholar. I particularly remember one night, as I stared into the little fire that kept us alive, how Seymour managed find enough flowers among the temple offerings to make a bouquet. Scraggly it might have been, but I kept that bundle of dried flowers close to my chest for as long as we lived in Baaj temple.

We couldn't stay though. Away from the world, the trauma of his childhood seemed to melt away from my son, but like butterflies, we had to eventually emerge from our chrysalis. I intended to defend my son from the world and give him the approval that I had thoughtlessly robbed him of even before his birth. I would make him a summoner and guide him to Zanarkand.

Though Baaj was a temple, Sin had destroyed the temple and the town before anyone could ever officially become a Fayth there. So while I taught him theory in those cool halls, eventually we had to return to Macalania to start formal training and get him officially recognized as a summoner. So just last year, I put a necklace, a trinket I brought from home around the neck of the empty fayth stone, and said a farewell to the temple which guarded our family so well. Perhaps someday, I will return again.

Seymour returned to Macalania with renewed confidence. He and I shared our outcast strength, and together we started a pilgrimage towards Zanarkand. Every disparaging remark everyone made about Seymour stopped. All the insults I had ever heard about being a human living in a Guado world ceased. No one touches a summoner or his guardian because ultimately their salvation lies in whether the summoner chooses to end his journey with the defeat of Sin. As long as summoner journeys no crime short of murder will cause an interruption of their journey, so all forgave the taboo as we visited each temple.

Some asked whether a mother should push a young boy into collecting the Aeons, but none of the doubters understood. I accepted that I had violated a taboo nearly a decade earlier. All I could hope for now was that everyone would forget my sin when I died. My son remained innocent, though. Even if I passed on, I wanted him to accomplish something, so that people would understand that Jyscal and I made our mistake for good reasons. I questioned my actions only once, as we made our way to the final temple.

Yunalesca explained the truth of the Final Aeon; sapped from me my last hope, that I could accomplish something larger in my death and the death of my child. In return though, I realized I could give Seymour my life as his Aeon, and give him myself. We took a walk on the dome's dark path to think it over, and then I had my moment of doubt and my moment of clarity. Seymour relied on me, as I relied on him, and his desire to remain with me outweighed his desire to defeat Sin. I understood the conflict, and why he wanted to have me than the world's reverence. If I became the Aeon, he would lose that precious support in return for power. Ever since we went to Baaj, times came when I forgot that Seymour had not even lived a decade; he had lived through so much. Still, he was a beautiful, mature boy, and I walked into the chamber with him for the last time confident that he would do what was needed.

I don't deny that I have regrets, but their complexity extends beyond the words 'who' and 'when'. Even as my passion for the world and it's ideals crumbled under despair, I still love Jyscal. I'm glad to have known him, to have listened to his ideas, and to have married him. I'm glad we share a son Seymour, even as I sit next to him and sense that his soul is changing from the gentle boy I will always love. I regret that I couldn't protect us, that the world was somehow not ready for this togetherness. Especially I regret the hurt I caused: The hurt of my husband, of my son, and if I look deep inside, myself.

The ancient lady binds and draws from me the newly-realized pain Seymour and I share. Pain of rejection defined our relationship. Together we mourned our outcast status, the inner turmoil from seeing things not work out nearly as they should. Dead faith, broken dreams, cliched fragments of a brighter life pile up to create my new form. If I could be physically ill from the creature that emerges from inside me, I would retch right now. My wrists feel weighted as if chains connect them to the ground. This anguish that emerges surprises me, as I watch from a distance what happens to my body. This monstrous Aeon expresses everything inside me I had kept hidden since Guadosalam.

Seymour's panicked gray eyes as he watches this transformation are the last thing I see before I float away. And also something darker...

_Take me to Baaj. To the time when my son and I were happy._

I am my opposite, the shameful truth of myself. I am Anima.


	9. Song of Roots

This is our dream. Three of us sisters gather around Yunalesca, and hands clasped to each other knowing that we're all about to become a final Aeon together. Outside the circle, watching our transformation, the fourth one, the summoner, waits. Four sisters made a promise to defeat Sin, and now we stand on the brink of fulfilling that promise.

We are the daughters of Remiem, the hidden training ground for summoners since the surrounding town died. Sequestered in a rocky nook on the border of the Calm Lands, the few summoners who knew of our home visited, and spoke to us who knew the summoning more than any other. Legend has it, that many centuries back, the High-Summoner Gandof lived in the old town, and they built the temple in celebration of his Calm. When it was near-completion though, the rock for the Fayth vanished, as if it had been stolen by a very clever thief. The actual town of Remiem did not last much longer, and in only a few decades all the citizens had either died or moved away.

Except for our family, the people charged with caring for the temple. Our ancestors did their duty, even when they saw no point. But even when handed a pointless, eternal task, people search for meaning, and inevitably find it. No one knew more about the mechanics of summoning than our family. Our studies brought about new abilities, new capabilities to the Aeons, so that they could get a summoner to his or her destination better. No one who knew of Remiem believed that coincidence caused all of the high-summoners since Gandof to train with us.

All those centuries though, and not one of our line of gifted summoners ever attempted a pilgrimage. We clung too much to our lives and our traditions and believed that perpetuating our wisdom for future summoners held more value than short-lived sacrifices. Things change though, so 600 years after the legacy of Remiem started, it ends, here and now, with us.

_I am the oldest, the one who kept the records. Ever since I could write, I copied and took notes while the others summoned. My eyes surpass everyone's for the detail they see. I know the motions of summoning, the theory. I catch the faltering motions that separate the low-rate summoners from the first-rate ones. So, I knew I would not be a summoner._

Ever since she was born, I watched her potential, our summoner sister. We practiced with aeon's that were nothing more than controlled fiends, and her summons always managed to be stronger and tighter. My eyes recognized the beauty of her movements, the simple grace with which she called up her fiends. She possessed not only talent in spades, but the work ethic and the interest to keep improving, something which despite my perfect knowledge, I never claimed to own.

Summon theory was my love, and while the others played and ran around in the maze beneath, I found a flowery meadow where the sun shined warm, even this far north, and I wrote with loving detail the secrets my family kept amongst themselves for generations. From just after breakfast to sunset, I lay there and wrote, taking the occasional time to make crowns of the blossoms that surrounded me.

I loved summoning, and I always felt a little jealousy that she had talent that no one else had; but I loved summer and spring days more. The light of the sun and the warmth of weaving living plants into the crowns I always wore. Little sister lived in the darkness of the temple, learning, practicing, refining until not even the best summoners from Bevelle could compare to her.

So I watched and wrote, filling more and more of my pages until I reached the end. Stories of summoners and aeons filled those pages, except the last ones. Generations of our family recorded the journeys of all the summoners, but always one question remained unanswered: what happened at the end? Zanarkand remained a myth after so many years of research. Summoners passed through there on the way to the ruined city, but not one visited afterwards.

Nothing bothered me as much as those last blank pages in my books. Everyday, they mocked me, so that I longed to put something to mar their smug whiteness. My dreams were of the Zanarkand beyond the great mountain Gagazet. Somehow I would make it there and complete my project.

I keep records, weave flowers. Though I do not fight as my sisters do, I stand behind them, as the unbreakable wall.

I am Cindy.

Many generations of our family came and went, but the day our sister and we left for our journey was the first time we emerged to the Calm Lands and the wider world beyond. We all read the eldest's chronicles, but for the first time, we were actually living the story. Words had described the places and people we came across, sketches accurately depicted the geometry of the Aeons, maps guided us across unfamiliar landscapes, but until we experienced the world for itself, we had know clue why the summoners chose to save the world.

One by one, our sister collected the Aeons, and over many campfires, she told us stories of how they came to be. Every one she visited had once been a person, and during the short time she spent in the chamber, she had to know and accept them enough to persuade the person beyond the Fayth to help her. The reality of each Aeon awed us, as she called each one. No illustration, no matter how beautiful, could depict the full fearsome majesty of one of these monsters being released.

We traveled everywhere, from the great city of Bevelle to the tiny Besaid Island. Twice we crossed the Moonflow at dusk, just as the pyreflies rose from the water. The flickering lights entertained us as we swayed gently on the Shoopuf's back. Guado welcomed us into their city, and we crossed into the Farplane to find approval in the faces of our ancestors as we finally applied their research. Our investigations led us to hidden Aeons, one so isolated from the rest of the world, we had to spend all our gil to convince a boat to take us there. The summoner among us talked to the Fayth inside, and though she acquired the Aeon, she refused to summon it, saying that it was not her place and time to use it. The other one, we found buried just north of our home; Remiem's lost Aeon, the stolen Fayth. We did right by him, that last one. We all said our prayers, and then our sister sealed his statue as official Fayths were sealed. She said since we could not do anything for the man himself, we could at least let his Fayth be near equal to the ones officially sanctioned by Yevon.

No one denied that our journey was difficult, we crossed all terrain in all weather, and fought against all types of fiends. Sin attacked villages where we stayed, delaying our journey for days or weeks at a time, while our sister sent the dead and comforted the grieving. We learned that a summoner is more than her Aeons, or her technical skill. A summoner must take her strength from others while helping them grow stronger. A summoner worked her magic through the thoughts, memories, and feelings of others.

We understand now, the meaning of the summoner's pilgrimage.

_I am the second, the one who leads. If I had the talent of my younger sister, surely I would have summoned. As it was, summoning bored me. Alongside my three sisters, I spent my childhood and my young adulthood learning the summoner's arts, but I never had any sort of knack. We learned theory; I wanted application. Each day after lessons I led expeditions to the edge of Remiem. A long bridge stretched from the temple steps to the exit, and it was an unspoken rule in our family that no one should cross it. But I did, regularly, watching the outside world from the crack, silently willing for the passing summoners to visit. Not for the training the other so valued, but to hear of the outside world._

Of the groups that visited, only one defeated Sin, a party of three men who seemed so much more than the normal summoners and guardians. Their friendship saw them through trials that ground down so many. One claimed to come from Zanarkand, but when pressed to tell more, he fell sullen as if confronting things he never bothered to contemplate before. The other two were ordinary Spirans, although the summoner had married an Al Bhed, one of the heathen tribe who disapproved of summons and Yevon. The last one lingered in the background, leaving no impressions on any of us sisters except for his presence. As sure as I knew the hidden corners of Remiem, I knew they would defeat Sin.

So when I saw two figures crossing the Calm Lands from south to north, I expected they were among the three pilgrims. I saw little from that narrow slit, two small red dots outlined against the bright blue sky. The man from Zanarkand vanished somehow since their visit, or so I thought until the summoner called his final Aeon. Sin's brown shell blotted out my view of the sky, but the summoner stood firm though he knew what would happen. A darker patch of brown, the summoner's Aeon, barreled towards Sin. Warm lights blocked my vision as the world suddenly exploded. Everything settled though, leaving one survivor to make his way here.

The surviving guardian stayed for a day or so to recover from his journey, and though my sisters and I all persisted, he told us nothing of what he saw in Zanarkand, or how exactly Braska defeated Sin. A stone expression hid a sorrow we all managed to see. Something about the process shook him, so much so that the next day, he left, heading towards Mount Gagazet, instead of where civilization waited to welcome him as a hero. For weeks, I waited for him to return, but he never crossed the Calm Lands again.

Ever since then, I wanted to know the dreadful mystery that man held. Why he felt the need to return to Zanarkand and why he never returned.

To solve the mystery of that man. I guard people and secrets with blades of fire and ancient magic. No one may harm what I deem sacred.

I am Sandy.

More difficulties face our party as we climbed Gagazet than we faced over any of the other thousands of miles. More summoners fail here than anywhere else along the journey; the numerous fiends we encounter prove that. Strong, angry souls feel the need to hinder us every few steps as they attempt to convince us to join their ranks. We refuse, of course, managing to send them by force to the Farplane where they belonged. We huddled together for warmth, rationed our meager supplies as best we could, anything to let us go on a few more steps.

We welcomed the sight of Gagazet's peak, so cold and clear compared to the narrow pathways below that we wondered if some magic affected the summit. More fiends crossed our paths including on so strong and so well controlled, that someone powerful must have sent it. Beyond here, no one but the heroes knew the stories, and they always remained silent.

The descent towards Zanarkand commenced in silence as we reflected on our journey and what lie at the end of it. The easily contemplated at Remiem gradually grew harder to face as we saw the broken city in the background. We intended to rush, discover the final truths with no delay, but when offered with a chance to relax one more time by a campfire, no one resisted.

Later, we learned that everyone who visited Zanarkand stopped at that little camp site at the outskirts. Mortality's weight pressed on us all so heavily the moment we step into the city limits, we felt the urge to reflect, and so we did.

It all ends so soon that we feel a need to start from the beginning.

_I am the youngest, far younger than even my summoner sister. People pity that a girl so young must know life and death so well to feel the need to become a guardian. I don't consider myself too young for anything. I trained as well and as hard as my sisters did when they were children; I excelled at my own thing for the very purpose of supporting my sister. Unlike the rest of them, I knew since before my fifth birthday that we would journey. Wistful 'somedays' turned into 'when she is old enough'._

Summoner arts bored me as much as they did my second sister. Besides, we already had the summoner so I learned how to be a guardian. I worked harder than anyone to learn how to shoot the arrows the monster arena guy whittled for me. All my toys, including the wand I carried with me, were training instruments so that even as I played princess with a flowered scepter, I fought off the dragons on my own.

My life until the age of twelve consisted of equal amounts of active work and play; never resting until one of my sisters caught me and put me to bed. Even then, at least one of them had to guard my door until I fell asleep. Every morning, I gathered more effort to put into my goal of becoming stronger. The summoners that pass by the temples told of other child guardians, but not one praised their abilities, saying that the children often hindered progress especially through the more grueling parts of the journey. "If you ever decide to journey," they told my sister, "leave her behind."

Nothing made this tough girl cry, except for the thought of being separated from my sisters or not being able to journey with them. My sister smiled at their suggestions, and nodded as if in agreement, but always she winked at me, and reassured me as they left that I would always be among her guardians. Without me, they would not find the energy to get up and travel in the morning. Together, we all would show him what me and the rest of my family were capable of.

The day I turned twelve, everyone started scheduling for the journey ahead. Every meal was served on a tablecloth's worth of maps, as one or the other sister traced potential routes with their fingers. Supplies were counted, weapons and armor honed for the arduous journey ahead. Famous Remiem chocobos, specially bought and trained, were saddled with anything we could conceivably need. Or, I should say that I saddled each of those chocobos myself, taking pride at how helpful I was being even before we started our journey.

Nothing mortified me more than when my three sisters exited the temple on the day we were all to leave and explained that summoners and guardian's traveled only with enough supplies and gil to get them to the next temple safely. The paths we traveled would all be too narrow to traverse by chocobos. Beyond those stern expression though, all of them smiled.

I never believed in home, as my sisters did, or as the summoners who pass through do. The only place I belong is wherever my sisters are. I do what I can to be with them. I do what I can to never be stopped.

I am the constant energy of motion, the irresistible force.

I am Mindy.

Zanarkand was so far north that in this late autumn weather, the sun never rose. Each day we spent in gloom was another day we debated whether the night was seasonal or truly eternal. We believed there must be light, somewhere, but its obvious lack dampened our spirits. We finally reached the dome where dead soldiers and ancient machina weapons assaulted us. Like a giant sphere, the memories of the dead played around us, so that when the fiends let us be, ghosts interrupted our journey. Recognizing some of their names from legend, we played a morbid game after we watched each of their scenes. We quizzed each other on who they were, where they were from, and what year they visited our home.

No travel games stopped our journey's progress, and when a man finally greeted us, we didn't turn back. Our travels had been long, and our muscles had resigned themselves to a permanent state of fatigue. Not one of us wouldn't welcome respite, but we continued on at his insistence. The lady Yunalesca waited for us past the last Cloister of Trials. Even here, our weapons and wits knew no rest as we must fight one last, difficult fiend.

Not a single Yevon-worshiping person would pass up the chance to meet the first high-summoner, the one who made the first pilgrimage to the ruins of her hometown to defeat Sin. If one person had the honor of being universally recognizable, it would be Lady Yunalesca, who we were told waited at the end of the trial along with the Final Aeon.

The Fayth itself surprised everyone almost as much as the prospect of meeting Yunalesca. Everyone knows the Final Aeon exists and exists here because the summoners who made to Zanarkand had the Final Aeon and defeated Sin. We rested around the light and life giving sphere at the corner of the chamber, each of us speculating on why exactly the stone was empty.

We had no clue how long we waited before Lady Yunalesca appeared in all her glory. Archaic features stared down at us, so far distant from humanity that we wondered if she felt compassion. When, she spoke though, her proud voice was gentle as she told of the choosing. Our summoner sister must choose from the three of us who she wanted to transform into the Fayth for the Final Aeon. Like we learned earlier in the journey, the summoner's strength depends on the bond between her and the Aeon, and only a very personal bond had enough power to defeat Sin. That Final Aeon eventually changed into Sin, and so any bond weaker than the one that existed before it would fail.

Of course our sister loved us dearly and equally, just as we loved her, the overachiever. No matter who she chose, we could surely defeat Sin. The problem we foresaw though lay with the two surviving sisters. Only the oldest among us had any clue how it felt to be alone in the world, and even she had been young when the second was born. Everything we did, we did together, as the four of us.

In the end, we all chose to end together. The four of us walked into the room beyond the Fayth's chamber as one and explained to Yunalesca our situation. If she felt surprised, no line or expression on her face betrayed the emotion. A nod of assent confirmed her willingness to transform all of us to the Final Aeon as she bade us to join hands, and instructed the summoner to stand to the side.

Think of your sister, she commanded us. Think of the relationship you all share with her, and with each other, for that is the power of your Aeon. Then think of the form you wish to take to assist your sister in the defeat of Sin. We obeyed, and now we unite as one Aeon in three parts. All that remains to do is decide our form exactly.

Together we dream of flowers in a bright meadow. We loved flowers. We loved movement as well. We desire the ability to act of our own will. If we had time to step back and watch our metamorphosis, we might ask how and why we turn into brightly colored insects buzzing around Yunalesca before we disappear into the Fayth. We don't think it matters right now. We went happy; we went powerful; we went together.

To our last sister, Belgemine: Use us wisely. Let us make you strong.

We are the Aeons who cannot be commanded and cannot be separated. We are the Magus Sisters.


	10. Song of Portals

Sin's story ends with me, it has to. I might not have known that until we listened to Yunalesca earlier, but I sensed it for awhile now. We solved the mystery: Braska, Auron and I, and I now know that all paths to Zanarkand closed to me the day Sin brought me here, to this world, the real world.

Before I agreed to become the Fayth, Yunalesca asked me why I volunteered to take on this burden. With Braska able to hear me, I couldn't quite answer. It sounds crazy, like the ravings of a man from an imaginary place. I suppose he'll hear me, when he prays to me and acquires my Aeon from Yunalesca, but of all the things in this showman's life, I prefer that this one thing be said in privacy.

I am Jecht, the man from Zanarkand, a place far, far removed from this particular set of ruins. Everyone knew me in that city, the world-famous star player of the Zanarkand Abes. My fans loved me, my wife adored me, and my son followed in my footsteps. Money from the sports paid for nice things and lots of booze. What more could I ask for?

I received more though, much more. I don't remember much about that morning, although only three months have passed between then and now. The sea called out to me, the old urge to practice rose up in me. Even if my talent eclipsed all the other players, I used to hone my showmanship by an abandoned beach, the only really private place in Zanarkand. In the good old days, I practiced daily, but I admit that late-night drinking became more of a priority than early-morning practice, so that more often than not I skipped it.

Say, if I had spent that morning in bed hungover as usual, maybe I would still live in Zanarkand unaware of everything outside. Still pushing my son to follow in my footsteps, still taking care of my wife, still pandering to the fans. I admit it's an empty life compared to what I lived in Spira, but if I could return, I would. So, that morning, I must have practiced by the sea for the first time in over a month.

I remember watching a ball sail towards to the horizon. A wave that could pass for a blitzsphere rose high to meet it, and sent the ball back into my arms before it crashed down on me. Darkness surrounded me as the current carried me to the craw of the sea monster, Sin. It opened something the water could push me through, and my world changed.

The city skyline expanded out from me, as if I were seeing it from the gull's eye, only everything but the lights of the building was black. Like a feather, I drifted downwards through the air as my sight blurred. I think I saw a person, and maybe he or she nodded at me as I fell to the floor. As I touched down my vision faded. I woke up in prison, but Braska'd already know that. He told me that he was going to Zanarkand, and so I could accompany him on his pilgrimage as a Guardian, a very convenient arrangement for the both of us.

While I lost my faith in ever returning to my Zanarkand, I gained insight in my travels with Braska and Auron. Braska and I share fatherhood in common. Before we left Bevelle, I met his seven-year-old daughter, the same age as my son. Watching the easy way that father and daughter talked and hugged, I wanted to see my son again. For the first time, I wished I was good at letting him know what he meant to me. Braska told me later, it took most of his effort to part with his daughter. The single hardest part of his pilgrimage was saying that last goodbye to Yuna when both knew those were his last words to her.

He journeyed for her sake, though. Braska and I share that commonality as well. Had Spira been my native land and I tried to raise my kid where Sin rampaged, I would risk all to keep him safe. I left him everyday to play blitz, so that he would see me as an example. Of all the people who watched me, only my son's approval mattered. I knew from his birth that he would follow my path, albeit reluctantly.

So I almost instinctively knew that he'd come to Spira one day. I wanted him to so much, especially as we journeyed on. The father the boy knew in Zanarkand played blitzball and drank when he wasn't playing or sleeping or heckling his son. I did so much more in Spira. I saw things, did things I was proud of and things I wasn't so proud of that changed my life. I saw why Braska planned to give his life for his daughter as we watched Crusaders fall as they defended the blitzball stadium and the citizens from Luca from Sin.

When my son came here, I wanted him to know what I had done. I wanted him to be proud of me. With Braska's permission, I recorded our journey and hoped that one day he would find it. Somehow, I know he will.

The one thing I want him to see the most, I could not record. He needs to know the truth about Zanarkand, about everything. Maybe he will understand why I made this choice and why I will go through so much trouble to make sure that he is the one to kill me. Auron knows some of what I have planned, even if he will never know the real reason until after I'm gone. Braska knows too, although he will be a spectator, watching from the Farplane. Like me in the body of Sin, just a spectator for the first time in my life.

I never could tell this to Braska and Auron, but the night we camped by the Fayth wall, I managed to visit Zanarkand again. Time passes the same between the two worlds; nearly three months since I failed to return from practicing. The fans and groupies who worshiped me still lined the stadium. Candlelight flickered around a crude shrine built to my memory. I walked through that crowd, announcing my arrival at the top of my lungs, but the masses stared through me to my memorial.

I walked to the front of the crowd, next to where old magazine photos made a collage honoring my career. A regulation blitzball I had autographed stood surrounded by the offending flickering lights. The sight of the mourning compelled me to breathe and breathe deep just to prove that air still moved through my lungs.

See, I'm not a ghost! I wanted to shout at the audience, but my voice was as my body, non-existent to those who used to hang on to my every word and gesture.

Only one person made eye-contact, a little boy with a jacket bearing Bahamut's wheel on the back. Braska called him a Fayth. That boy crept me out, although when he beckoned for me to follow I did. The crowd between me and him left trails of mist on my arms like the spray from the edges of the machina that filled the blitzsphere. At least my feet walked on warm, solid ground, like the pavement in my Zanarkand.

He didn't speak as we made our way down the street between the stadium and my houseboat. Every now and again, he stopped to point at proof that I touched this world once, but no longer. A large picture of my handsome, confident face lined a billboard. Banners underneath declared the mourning of the world for the loss of their hero.

The title of hero no longer suited me. I still accept that I was the best player the Zanarkand Abes ever knew and will ever know, and that I was an excellent showman, but Spira changed my definition of a hero. Braska qualified as a hero; everyone derided him for traveling with a drunk and an outcast, for marrying an Al Bhed, but his resolve to sacrifice himself for peace never wavered, even when Auron and I became discouraged.

Bahamut Fayth watched and waited from a distance while the significance of the memorials embedded itself in my mind. Finally I caught up, demanding he give me answers, but he shook his head and pointed to my houseboat.

My wife stood on the railings, the good, devoted groupie who never questioned my outings, my drinking, anything. Honestly, she bored me after the first year or so, but I never was the man to just abandon what was his. But she always adored me; even now I saw evidence of her wasting away. Were her cheeks so sunken before I left, or her skin so pale? Certainly she never looked so sad, even after our fights. My son stayed further in on the deck, a determined scowl on his face while he practiced blitz. I accused him so much of being a crybaby, so why was he the only one in this city not crying?

He looked like his mother, but I still recognized something of myself in him, so much that I trained him from birth for blitz just as my father trained me. I hated the sentimental garbage, still do, but since I could never say it aloud, I would like the opportunity to say it in my final, unspoken confession. I love you, boy. I wish that you can come to Spira someday and see how your old man turned out.

I prepared to say the words to his deaf ears, but he suddenly turned in my direction and his bright eyes burned with determination. He tossed the ball I gave him for his last birthday in the air and prepared a flipkick, the basic move for many of the best shooting techniques. It went through my body and landed just a few feet behind me, at the feet of the Fayth, a weak shot but a hit nonetheless. Our last practice, the morning before I went out to sea, he still missed nine out of ten tries. Now, I watched him from a distance as he nailed the ball consistently and exactly where he aimed, right through me.

The Fayth assured me that my son did not sense me in any way, but I still turned away from my boy without saying what I intended. Take me back to Spira, I demanded, knowing that Braska and Auron needed me to complete their journey, and the burning desire to see the future Zanarkand pulled me back from this dream. He refused, not until he told me the truth and why I was brought back here the moment I touched the Fayth at Gagazet.

My existence was all a dream, those crowds, my wife, my son, just illusions from people who never let go of their lives when they saw defeat approaching. Someone in the depths of Sin summons our city from the Fayth trapped in that wall.

I'd seen Braska summon his Aeons. As they were nothing but the dreams of Fayth, Braska and the rest of the summoners controlled them easily. That truth made me stagger for a second as I wondered if I was nothing but an Aeon and something inside Sin controlled me.

No, I reject that. No one controls the Star Player of the Zanarkand Abes. No one summons him, starts him, stops him, or bends him to their will. I never played for puppets, even if the fans at the stadium never had individual faces to me. I never married a doll, even if my wife devoted all her time to me, so much that I wondered if anyone else existed to her. My son...

I believe in my son, that if anyone besides me in all of Zanarkand truly mattered, he did. I called him crybaby so many times, I sometimes forgot I had named him something different. His tears, his shouts give me faith in his reality. He exists for his own sake, to perform one day, not to sit in the crowd. If I somehow have something which makes me more real than the rest, then I know he possesses it as well.

No matter whether the world we lived in was an illusion, my son and I are more than that.

The Fayth pleaded to me. End this. We don't want to dream anymore.

And then, I woke up, both Auron and Braska looking over me with concerned expressions. I never explained anything, and after we moved camp for another day's travel, they never asked again.

Jecht lived. I hope the world, both worlds, say that about me when I leave for good. Jecht lived, Jecht worked hard, Jecht played hard. I know one world still mourns me while the other will curse and revere me in turn. I exist in the hearts of people from both worlds as an extraordinary figure, and if I have that, I can accept this fate almost happily.

I don't know how this being Sin thing works, if the Final Aeon really gets reborn. Will I control it from the inside? Will it take me over? Will it be a progression from one to the other? I suppose I'll find out when Braska carries me to the Calm Lands and uses me to kill Sin. I plan though, in case I can control Sin. Auron will watch over my son, and when he is ready, I will bring them to Spira.

The tugging of Yunalesca tells me to think of a form for my Aeon, and my mind freezes. I am Jecht. Jecht is Jecht. I never wanted to be anything besides myself in the twenty-eight years that I lived. I want to be me, larger, stronger, but even more myself than I was before. More than that, whatever my form is, I want to remain me for as long as I can. I want to bring my son to Zanarkand and show him this truth, and then, I want him to kill me.

I will end this, the spiral of death created to fuel a illuminated puppet show. Zanarkand commands my love more than Spira ever will, but some truth inside me says that Spira must take precedence, even at the sacrifice of my hometown. The world should belong to the living and the real.

I have done my part. Auron, Braska, the rest is on your shoulders.

I will be the last incarnation of Sin.


	11. Song of Stasis

Everything ends now, the Final Aeon, Spira's hope, maybe even the world. I lie here, defeated and cold by those who rejected the methods I gave this world to defeat Sin. They have already moved on, to search in vain for another way to kill Sin, so I have no one to give my last words to. Even if there were, could I say everything I want to convey with so little breath?

This is to the world; please receive it before you end.

I am Yunalesca, the last person who remembers the real Zanarkand. For a thousand years, I lived in these ruins, unsent, waiting for those who journeyed to reward them with the Final Aeon. My path twisted so deeply that my past self could never have fathomed its destination. I spent so long trying to avoid tracing the road afraid of what I might find, but now I can't do anything but walk through my memories and answer my uncertainties.

Emotions defined my living existence. I remember smiling, laughing, crying at the slightest provocation. Zaon held my hand through so much, some doubted my strength to do what was necessary. When the war came, those same emotions gave me the will to fight, for I did not just fight because of my summoner's vows but because I had memories I wanted to preserve and people I wanted to protect. My feelings strengthened my ties to my Aeons and my guardian, placing me among the strongest of the battle summoners.

As I fought, I suffered though. I watched things fall and crumble like they were made of nothing more durable than glass and paper. I felt the connections to my Fayth splinter and tear as they died again and again for me, and then finally shatter when their statues turned to sand under the pressure of machina. Many summoners suffered as greatly as I, but one by one they learned to shield themselves, to harden themselves against the tragedies. They no longer suffered, and then they died, along with nearly everyone else.

The dumb little girl I used to be never learned. She chose to fall in love and find beauty in the person by her side. Adversity cultivates the hardiest flowers, and the love of Zaon and I had been planted the moment we met, but without the war, we would have never let it bloom. The love gave me the strength to keep running, and keep fighting, until my father summoned me to his room.

The war was not going well. Straight battles against Bevelle could bring no victories. He told me the bleak truth, the one any front line summoner knew just from waking up in the morning. So we must choose another form of victory. Zanarkand's memories and traditions must hold, even if the people and location must wither. He had the bones of a plan to share with me, and that night we discussed it, sometimes gently, sometimes violently. The following three nights, we refined those plans until we knew how much the present and future worlds needed to sacrifice for our victory.

The fourth night, with the touch of my fingers on Zaon's shoulder as I prepared to wake him up for the second time during our life together, my emotions started to withdraw. The other summoners sealed their hearts to keep fighting; I did so to stop fighting and start sacrificing. My brothers and sisters from Zanarkand first, then my father and city, and finally even my husband. I knew soon I would have to watch others sacrifice too, and my heart needed to remain hard.

I admit, when I walked into Bevelle to strike the deal my father--now Sin--and I had planned, revenge filled my heart. Those responsible for this travesty needed to know what we gave up for the sake of their victory and their machina. Back in Zanarkand, we simply thought to revive the tradition of Summoning and the Final Aeon to fuel the death and rebirth cycle of Sin, but as I thought of my father sacrifice, the idea to have them worship him satisfied a shameful urge in me. I smelled desperation sweating off the man to become the first Grand Maester of Yevon that I piled my demands on him.

On behalf of his city, and the rest of the world, he sacrificed more than any other individual. He gave his son to the temple to become a beautiful, powerful Fayth. Afterwards, he sealed himself away to write Yevon's teachings, those conditions my father and I demanded the people of the new world to follow in order to atone for their sins.

Zaon and I set the path every other summoner journeyed upon. Temples rose in honor of Yevon and our journey. People sacrificed for the sake of others, those who lost everything. In place of Zanarkand's warrior Fayth, this new world, Spira, provided its own. More than anyone else, those five nameless people shaped the next one-thousand years.

None of them had special skills or talents that would have made them famous in better times. Their talents had lain beyond their eyes and within their hearts. All of them saw and felt deeper than those around them. They suffered and lost to the point that becoming a Fayth gave them what they needed, an end without endings. In the midst of those who shouted to become part of the historical 'first pilgrimage', their spirits spoke louder until I could no longer ignore them.

I remember the little girl Valefor, so much like me, that I watched her walk into the temple, regretting that she would never know a man like Zaon. Those features that shone with sadness should have shone with youthful beauty in a happy world. She may never join her family or her brother, all of whom my father carried away on his initial rampages of Besaid. If I had a heart left, I would have apologized to that girl, that she must become a Fayth to resolve the sadness inside her.

I remember Ifrit and Shiva, separated by so much distance and by the barriers they themselves set up. As I watched his story and took his Aeon inside me, I knew Macalania needed a temple and a Fayth, not so much to finish his story, but to know what Ifrit could never know. If they knew before what they learned in their separation, they might have had a happy ending. As it is, I'm sure they opposed each other over the years, even as they stay together within the hearts of each summoner who prays at their Fayth.

I remember Ixion, the old man who wanted a legacy to pass on, so that he may die. He gave his house to Yevon along with his soul. For eternity, he gallops to the defense of his summoners. That man gained and lost everything, including both sons on opposite sides of the same conflict. Bevelle and Zanarkand's war affected not only the large cities, but people in every corner of the world. I never met either of them, but I understood the pain of his loss.

Finally, I remember Bahamut, the little boy who made a defiant dragon. I nearly cried as father and son parted in the temple, thinking not just of this separation, but of what Zaon and I could have had. No doubt when the son decided to make his sacrifice his father felt the conflict of pride and sadness, perhaps what my father might have felt when I agreed to carry out this plan of his. He loved his city without hating Zanarkand, even if he disliked me personally for what I forced his family to go through. For centuries, no one except that little boy took action to defeat Sin permanently.

And Zaon, my beloved Zaon. How wonderful to know in the end that he remained true to me in his heart, that the love we had for each other survived the test of the final Aeon. I loved him so much that I cried over the statue for the last part of my sacrifice. Sin killed me when I summoned my husband's Aeon, but I died before then, the moment I saw his handsome form turn to stone and become the Final Aeon. The summoner must witness the Aeons transformation, not only for the ritual, but to reassure me that they know the bonds they must give to Sin.

Death gave no respite from duty, and without Zaon waiting for me at the Farplane, I had no reason to want to drift there helplessly as so many souls have recently. Yet, the effort required to lift my dead self from the ground surpassed anything I knew. My spirit desired to rest with my body on a floor of broken road. The world never knew how close the Final Aeon came to never happening.

I made promises though, and the world depended on me to follow through. I dragged myself to the temple, wrapping myself up in a cloak of apathy and preparing for the long waits ahead of me. Though inevitable in that dark temple so far away from civilization, my humanity gradually chipped away, until only duty forced me to stop the transformation into a fiend.

Over the last milennium, everything and nothing has changed. Generations came and went, and people managed to carry on their family line. Many summoners attempted the journey to Zanarkand, and a few even made it. Only four after me had the will to sacrifice everything. Those four came to me so certain of their future, even when their guardians doubted, they never blinked. They won my respect, these summoners, for having the will of fighters and finding something to save in Spira. I think...if they lived in Zanarkand, any one of them would truly be the High Summoner.

Individual faces change, the world stays the same. Small towns never grew larger. Except for the High Summoner Gandof proving the truth of what I told the Bevellians so long ago, religious and scientific thought never progressed. The outside world remained as static as the Dream World through the seasons. I once watched both with fascination during my endless wait, but seeing the same events over the centuries hollowed my heart as I took to looking outwards at the stars until I sensed someone crossing Gagazet's peak.

The pilgrimage seems simple while the summoner trains at a temple. If one Aeon accepts a summoner as their master, chances are the rest will follow, but so many had lost their wills or life while traveling. The Aeons, once inside the summoner, leeched the energy needed to fight on as the terrain grows rougher and more bewildering. Most never make it to the ruins, and of those who do, not all find the will inside them for the final sacrifice. In that millennium, only four joined me to witness the truth of Sin's death.

For a thousand years, the Final Aeon gave hope to the world, and balance between the dream Zanarkand and Spira remained stable. The feared Sin sometimes brought inhabitants of one world to the other, though most died quickly enough as Sin deposited them in deep ocean. Only Jecht survived, a man I never remembered anyone dreaming of before. His celebrity commanded attention in Zanarkand, and his leaving the world seemed to change everyone.

It changed Spira as well. Luck let him survive, sent him to Bevelle just as the summoner Braska set out for his journey, and turned him into something real for all people in Spira. Choice fulfilled the Man from Zanarkand's destiny. The first Zanarkand Sin rose from Braska's Final Aeon; the first one who knew of the two worlds, who could learn how to intentionally bring people from one side to the other.

Braska's other guardian changed Spira too. Until the end, he refused to accept the Final Aeon. Like Jecht, he planned something that extended far beyond his life and the death I gave him. His summoner entrusted him with a duty, so did Jecht, and that man pulled together every bit he had to fulfill those promises. In another time, another situation I would have admired him, but I regret that I had to kill him.

The moment Braska's daughter entered Zanarkand together with that guardian and Jecht's son, I knew we would have to fight this battle. I tried to reason, to let her choose to follow in the path of her father, but in the end, they forced me to sacrifice them for the tradition of the Final Aeon. I counted on a battle with strong warriors. No weakling makes it to Zanarkand; I never counted on losing to them. So they walked out, wounded and victorious, no doubt bewildered about their next move.

Those who hold a strength that surpasses a thousand years, listen to my message. You stand at a precarious point now that you have destroyed the Final Aeon forever. If you are strong enough, perhaps you will find the way to defeat Sin permanently, but the truth still stands: without the Final Aeon, one world must die. For better or worse, the world must change now.

And as I lay here on the verge of dissolving and rejoining my beloved Zaon, I wonder whether I should praise or curse you all with my last breath. Only the future knows.

Perhaps someday I will know too.


End file.
